


When the Sun Goes Black

by count-to-seventeen (parisienneheart)



Series: Count to Seventeen and Close Your Eyes [3]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: Adventure, Battery City, Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, Frank/Jamia mention, Friendship, Gen, Mystery, Non-Graphic Violence, Revenge, Science Fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-23
Updated: 2016-08-23
Packaged: 2018-08-10 12:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 50,875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7845328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parisienneheart/pseuds/count-to-seventeen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After barely surviving the battle at S/C/A/R/E/C/R/O/W headquarters to save Grace, Frank vows to go back to Battery City, find Gerard, and get revenge.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A companion piece to When All The Lights Go Out, best read between chapters 14 and 15. This is the "2.5" part of the Count to Seventeen series.
> 
> This story is narrated from Frank's POV and illustrates what exactly happened in the SING music video, and what happened afterwards (according to this universe of course). Again... I probably would never write another first person POV fic again, haha, but I was trying to be consistent with the earlier parts of the series. Although I really enjoyed writing from Frank's perspective as a contrast to Leya :)
> 
>  Crossposting this fic from my tumblr [count-to-seventeen.tumblr.com](http://count-to-seventeen.tumblr.com)
> 
> _Disclaimer: this is a work of fiction and is not affiliated with the individuals the characters are based on and i do not profit from this transformative work_

 

_I beg for a brand new life_

_I pray for a second chance_

_And the strength_

_To burn this motherfucker down_  
  


 

* * *

 

 

I’m down on the ground now, feeling cold heat go through my neck. It’s kind of like the feeling when you’re so cold your skin feels like it’s burning, or when you touch something so hot it feels cold. Except instead of lasting a few seconds, it’s ongoing.

Am I dying?

 

…

…

…

 

I must be alive since I’m still able to think…right?

And I can hear now, too…

I hear shards of glass spill onto the floor, the “pew’s” of the lasers shout out into the air. Rubber soled shoes pad and squeak across the floor. The sound of the siren fades off into white noise.

I can smell, too. The smell of something burning, something smokey. Probably my own clothes.

  
  


  
  


Why am I just laying here?

  
  


I can’t move.

  
  


I can’t even make my eyes open.

  
  


I feel like I might throw up.

  
  


“Unhh…” I hear a groan not too far from me.

I hear more foosteps come this way.

“Is that one still alive?” I hear a voice say.

Were they talking about me? Fuck, now I can feel my heart beating fast.

But it’s not me they’re talking about.

“Turn him over,” a voice orders. Weird. It’s a woman’s voice.

I hear the groaning again.

“So…” the voice continues. “You’re still alive? And you managed to wound my favorite soldier? Bravo.”

Fuck, I need to open my eyes! I can finally feel my hands. I’m still holding my ray gun.

“Let me finish that rat once and for all!” I recognize that voice. It’s Korse.

I hear shoes shuffling quickly across the floor and try as hard as I can to open my eyes. It feels like I’m peeling my eyelids from being superglued, but now I can see through the hazy slits of my eyes. There’s a huddle of agents on the floor, and a woman in a gray suit and skirt. I try to see who they’re huddled over, and all I can make out is a red sleeve–fuck, it’s Mikey!

Korse limps over with an angry look on his face. Motherfucker…I’ll fucking kill him once I can get up.

“You won’t touch him!” barks the woman. She stands up and slaps a hand across Korse’s face.

He just stood there.

He just stood there and took it–what the fuck? Who is this lady?

“He’s more use to me alive, anyway,” she continues in a more subdued voice. I can see her head now, with this weird bowl cut and straight bangs. And her red lipstick. She looked Asian.

She turns to the other SCARECROW agents. “Take Party Poison. You know what to do with him. And as for the Kobra Kid… Well, well, who knew you would turn out to be of some use to me?”

“What are you going to do…?” I can hear Mikey weakly gasp out.

“Don’t be afraid.” She kneels down beside him. “All we’re going to do is repair you. I have big plans for you. And for your friend Party Poison. You’ll both be great assets to me and you won’t have to worry about being Killjoys anymore. _And_ you can still be friends. Isn’t this wonderful news?”

“Go to hell,” Mikey mutters out.

The woman laughs this really cutesy high-pitched laugh. I want to fucking push that smiling face of hers into the ground.

“Feel free to dispose of the others. They’re of no value to us,” she adds as she stands back up.

“Director, what about the girl?” one of the agents asks.

“What about her?” she asks back.

“Uh–” the agent starts.

“We don’t need to concern ourselves with her anymore. We got what we wanted.” The lady walks away out of the range of my vision. I hear the clack of heels and that agitating giggle fade away.

Some of the SCARECROW agents go over and pick up Gerard’s body.

I can feel my heart sink.

It can’t be… Gerard can’t be dead…

Wait a minute–that lady said that she had plans for both of them… what the hell…what’s going on?

I turn my attention back to Mikey. His eyes are barely open and he’s grabbing at his shoulder. Some of the agents go over to him and one of them kicks his ray gun out of his left hand. I look upward, and I can see–it was Korse who kicked the gun away.

No.

Fuck, I’m supposed to make sure shit like this doesn’t happen to him!

“I suppose you’re proud, aren’t you?” Korse taunts as he kneels down over Mikey. “For what you did to my leg…” He lifts up his gray pant leg and shows a leg split open, revealing a sparking tangle of wires

…THE FUCK?

Korse is a fucking robot or something?

“Not really, seeing as I missed…” Mikey grunts out. I can see him trying to get up, but failing because of the wound in his shoulder and Korse crouching over his legs.

“The Director said to repair you, and oh, repair you we will, but not without breaking you down first. That pride, that gumption, that fire that makes you who you are will be drowned out and eliminated. I’m going to get inside your head, at the very heart of your horrors, and rip and tear your mind apart until there’s nothing of you left to salvage. I am going to make you suffer until there is nothing left of your sanity, and even the Director will have no choice but to eliminate your existence, _and then you’ll wish you had never pointed a ray gun in my direction_!”

“Good luck with that, you ass-breath smelling, piece of shit android!” Mikey spit up at Korse just as he finished saying this.

Korse’s face contorts in anger and he lunges downward to roughly grasp a hand over Mikey’s mouth and nose. Mikey puts his hands up to Korse’s, trying to pry them off, but to no avail.

“Korse, stop this! We must follow orders! Korse!” one of the agents next to them hollers. But Korse doesn’t stop, keeping his hand over Mikey’s face.

Fuck–I can see Mikey’s boots writhing on the floor from his exertion of trying to push Korse off of him.

“Korse!” the other agent yells again.

Korse ignores him, keeping his hand clamped over Mikey’s mouth, a frenzied look in his black eyes.

No, no, no–the fucking psychopath was going to fucking suffocate him! This can’t happen…not to Mikey!

“Arrrrgh!” I think it was the rage or something, but I was finally able to get up, and the first thing I did was to get up and start shooting everything in my view.

“AHHHHH!” I continue screaming as I walk forward, seeing only Korse in my path. I shoot at him, one, two, three times, hitting the center of his back once. He falls backwards, hands reaching behind him.

Mikey was gasping out as he turned his head quickly to look at me from the floor. “Frank?”

*PEW**PEW**PEW**PEW*

*PEW**PEW**PEW**PEW*

“Ugh!”

I had gotten hit by a couple lasers before I could answer Mikey.

Fuck.

I stay down this time. My stomach and the area above my collar bone are bleeding. I can feel my warm blood seeping through my clothes.

“Mister Korse, are you alright?!”

“Get off me! It’s just another circuit damage I’ll have to have repaired. Make that one burn!” Korse hisses.

I hear the shuffling of feet. Sounds like Korse wasn’t gonna try and finish me off himself.

“Did you not hear the Director? We need to get this one repaired! And dispose of the others! Now move it!” one of the brown-nosed agents was yelling at everyone.

“Frank!” I hear Mikey calling out to me.

I’m sorry Mikey…but if there’s any way I’m going to save you, I can’t answer.

“Oh god… Frank!” I could hear the crack in Mikey’s voice. Fuck, the kid’s crying…

“Frank!” He kept on yelling even as the agents took him away. I could tell because his voice faded away.

Don’t worry Mikey… I’m gonna get you out of this…

“Is he dead?” I hear an agent ask as they near me.

“Sure looks dead to me… See all the blood?” the other agent replies.

“Great, blood. Ugh, let’s just take him before we need a mop to clean up this mess,” the first agent answers.

I can feel my legs and arms be picked up. It made my wounds hurt, but there’s no way I’m making a sound just to do something like groan in pain.

I need to focus, I need to focus… Frank, you just got shot a couple times, but you’re not dead… And you’re probably not going to die from these wounds… You can get through this… You can get out of here somehow and… Somehow you can save Mikey. And Gerard.

I try to focus on the conversation I can faintly hear from the room I’m being taken away from.

“…don’t forget about the other one outside with the car–gotta make sure we get rid of that mess. Oh boy…sure is gonna be a hell of a clean-up tonight…”

The other one… don’t tell me they’re talking about Ray. The damn reason I closed the door on him was so he could get out with Grace!

I was carried for what felt like a few minutes. It hurt so fucking bad… this is a little worse than I thought.

I was carried down an elevator shaft, through a few more corridors, until we got to a darker level of the building. Wonder what fun I’m in for…

“The furnace room?” one of the agents questions.

“Can you think of a better way to dispose of the evidence?” his buddy replies.

“I guess not. And he’s dead anyway…”

Oh, how I want to grin and snarl at that.

“Well, let’s get him in here, then.”

I peek open one eye and see a large steel door. Kind of like the ones you used to see in those old Looney Tunes cartoons every time something top secret was locked. Like a vault.

The two agents carry me in after opening the door. I see these large copper colored tank-looking things, with latched doors onto them over these large and narrow steel cart things on wheels–I’m going to be fucking cremated.

The two dolts hoist me atop said steel gurney, which makes everything I’m feeling hurt like ten times worse. Gotta keep a stone face, though.

“That’s kind of creepy, how he’s still holding onto his gun,” one of the agents remarks.

“Haven’t you ever been to a funeral before? The bodies get stiff once they’re deceased. You ever wonder where the phrase ‘ya gonna have to rip it out of my cold, dead hands’ came from? Tch…how did a simpleton like you get through SCARECROW Academy?”

“Shut up! It’s not everyday I have to throw dead bodies into a furnace.”

His buddy laughs. “You just wait… This is only your first year here, ain’t it?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothin’. Now speaking of stiff bodies, let me get this nifty ray gun out of our friend’s _cold, dead hands_.”

He picks up my right hand and reaches around my fingers, which are still wrapped around the trigger.

I blink open my eyes.

He made the mistake of pointing the gun directly into his face.

*PEW*

I roll off the gurney–or whatever the hell you’d call it–and hit the floor. I shoot out in front of me at the second guy’s ankles. Bam.

“Ahhh!” He falls and grabs at his ankles.

I clamber up onto the steel gurney to support myself standing up, ignoring the pain of my laser wounds.

“No! Wait!” the other guy protests as I aim my gun at him.

“Sorry… But I need to get my friends out of here. And something tells me you’re not gonna let me do that–or else you wouldn’t be reaching for your gun right now.”

“I’m sorry! I was just following orders!” he says as he lets go of his gun, which was at his hip.

“Just following orders… You know, that’s what the Nazis said after they lost in World War Two. Oddly enough, I find myself in a similar situation as their victims, being sent to the furnace room to be burned alive and disposed of. Hasta la vista, motherfucker!” I raise my gun again.

“Please! I’m only 23 years old!” The agent ripped off his BL/ind mask, and indeed there was the tear-stained, booger-dripped, sobbing face of a guy that looked barely old enough to be out of college.

Fuck me…

He’s shuddering and swallowing, keeping his eyes on mine. I hobble over and kick his gun away. I bend down and grab at his jacket collar while pointing my gun at the nape of his neck.

“Do you know how many 23 year olds, teenagers, and children were displaced, orphaned, and killed because of the wonderful company you work for?”

He didn’t answer.

“No, of course you don’t,” I say with a sardonic laugh. “That’s not what matters. All that matters is that everyone keeps smiling.”

“Please… don’t kill me…”

“You killed my friend.”

“That was Korse–”

“But you don’t care!”

It’s quiet for a little bit.

I don’t know what to do.

I don’t exactly want to kill this kid, but he’s an agent, just like all the other agents I’ve killed. The only problem is that now he has a face.

Before I can make a decision, I hear footsteps and talking from outside the door. I yank up the kid from the floor.

“Those are your friends out there? Are they bringing _my_ friend?” I ask him.

“I think so…” he answers with a sniff.

“Good, you’re gonna let 'em in.”

He blinks his wide eyes at me for a couple seconds.

“Let them in or I’ll fucking shoot you, dude,” I tell him with a groan.

He scrambles to his feet and goes over to the door. I follow close behind him.

*KNOCK, KNOCK*

“Hey, let us in. We got the other Killjoy,” one of the other agents said from outside the door.

“Y-yeah, hold on…” the 23-year old agent replies while I have a gun pointed at the back of his neck.

“Hurry, this one’s kind of heavy,” a voice comes from the other side of the door.

The young agent opens up the latched steel door wide, waiting for the agents to step in.

“It’s about ti–” I step out from behind the kid and shoot at the two agents carrying Ray.

The young agent cries out in horror as I send a couple reinforcing shots into the heads of the agents, who are now collapsed on the ground.

I hear him scramble and quickly turn around.

He’s reaching on the ground now, diving for his ray gun.

“Don’t even try it!” I yell out as I shoot near his head, which sends the laser ricocheting into multiple pipes around him. He darts his head back toward me.

“Help me get your pals in here,” I tell him.

It must be the deeply seeded obedience he’s been trained with to work for SCARECROW, but he actually does what I say and helps drag in one of the ghosted agents.

While he’s doing that, I give my attention to Ray, who had been dropped while I killed the agents carrying him. I drag him off to rest against the wall opposite the door.

I turn back toward the other fallen agent, and the 23-year old helps me take him in.

Fuck, I can feel the sores of the laser wounds on my stomach… I grab at them to try and stop the bleeding.

“What are you going to do now?” the kid mutters with a dark look at me.

“I need to dispose of them. Can’t leave evidence of our wrongful deeds, now can we?” I say with a biting resentment as I turn toward him.

“Are you saying–you’re going to put them in there?!” The kid pointed a finger toward the furnace with an agape jaw.

I may be letting him live, but I’m not gonna let him get away without suffering.

“I’m not going to do it. You’re going to do it,” I tell him as I cross my arms, still keeping my ray gun pointed at him.

The young agent looks at me with horror in his eyes. “Me?’

"Did I fucking stutter?” I spit out. “Now get those fuckers on the gurney and burn them. You’re gonna need the ashes as evidence you did your job.”

He gives me a wide-eyed look, not saying anything.

“Do it or I kill you–and then I’ll fucking hoist your scrawny ass on there with the rest of them!” I bark out.

With a grimace, the kid picks up one of the agents and puts him on the gurney, and then so on with the other two.

“Okay, now push them into the furnace…” I egg on with a raise of my eyebrows.

The agent begrudgingly obliges, keeping a tight lipped expression on his face as he does so.

“Now light it up,” I order, motioning for him to move with my ray gun.

He shuffles over to the side of the furnace container, to where a lever and buttons are. He stays in front of it for a few seconds.

“LIGHT IT UP,” I repeat.

The boy sniffs as he follows my order, turning the dial. I can hear the flames roar and after a few seconds, smoke starts to travel upward from this smoke stack-looking thing into a funneled tube that goes somewhere throughout this building.

I start walking backward, keeping my gun raised at him. “Thank you for cooperating,” I tell him. “Now, they should check back here–I’d say within a few hours to a day–to make sure the job was finished. Or maybe they won’t. How the fuck am I supposed to know?”

“Wait–” the kid starts.

I shrug my shoulders and hurry on out, pulling the door shut.

“Wait!” he hollers just before it slams. I go over to the keypad next to the door and press the lock combination.

BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG

“LETMEOUTOFHERE!!!!” The screams were muffled. But at least that’s a sign that he can’t get out.

It was the least I could do, to emotionally scar him in return for letting him live. During the Holocaust, the ones who had to dump the dead bodies of concentration camp prisoners into the crematoriums were other prisoners. They had to burn their friends and comrades alive if they wanted to live, or else die along with the rest of them. Psychological torture. That’s what it was. And that’s what I prefer to do if I can’t kill.

I continued to hear his screams even as I started dragging Ray with me down the corridor. After about half a minute, my wounds started annoying the fuck out of me again.

Just… fucking…stop bleeding!

I leave Ray slumped on the ground against one of the walls as I try to get over the pain. I look closely at him for the first time in the last five minutes and I can see…his chest got blasted. I grab at my own chest, feeling pain. Of course, it’s not physical pain I’m feeling anymore.

“Goddammit, Toro… I thought you got out safe,” I mutter out, feeling the itch of tears coming from behind my eyes.

I kneel down, getting close to Ray. I smooth out his long curly hair from his face. He still has that badass eyepatch on.

“You know, you look like an angel when you sleep,” I choke out with a mixture of laughter and tears. “I bet you’d punch me for saying that, haha.”

I put my head down, letting my tears finally come out.

Ray, who’s been like the cool older brother I never had all these years, he’s…

“…dude… are you crying?”

I shoot my head back up and see Toro’s eye fluttering open.

“Toro!” I exclaim.

Motherfucker’s alive!

I wrap my hands around his soft, luscious head of hair and bring him toward me. “Don’t you ever fuck with me like that again, asshole! I thought you were fucking dead!”

“…I thought _you_ were fucking dead…” Ray mutters against my shoulder. “Hey. What the fuck happened?! Last I saw, Dr. D and his crew had just arrived and then I got shot. Is Grace okay?”

“Dr. D…? Grace is fine. BL/ind’s not gonna go after her anymore,” I answer. That much I’m sure about now. If Dr. D was there and got to Grace, and BL/ind didn’t pursue them, they must be fine.

“What makes you so sure?” Ray questions.

“The Director said so. That she got what she wanted…” I was thinking back to that moment.

“The Director? What about Mikey and Gerard…” Ray asks with a painful look on his brow.

“Mikey’s alive, but he’s hurt…”

“And Gerard?”

“…I don’t know…” I answer as I look toward the ground. “But big plans… That’s what she said, that they had big plans for the two of them-unh…”

“Hey, you’re hurt–” Ray exclaims as he sits up straight, focusing his view on my stomach.

“I’ll be fine,” I laugh. But at that moment, I could feel myself shaking. Fuck, what’s going on with my body?

Ray opens up my vest and lifts up my shirt. I can’t really argue against him when he gets concerned for real.

“Holy shit, Frank! You need a fucking doctor…”

“Heh, yeah? Well, I doubt I’m gonna find one that wouldn’t rather shoot me than fix me up.”

“We have to get out of here. Where are we? How did we get down here?” Ray asks.

“We’re right outside the furnace room.”

“Furnace room? Is that what I smell?”

“Yep…and if I wasn’t careful, that would have been us being roasted right now,” I reply with a laugh.

Ray blinks in disgust. He looks up at me. “So… where do we go now?”

I lose my smirk. “We have to get Mikey and Gerard. They said that Mikey’s getting 'repaired’, whatever the fuck that means. I don’t know about Gerard… but assuming that the Director had plans for him, too, I’m sure they’re not trying to get rid of them like they are with us.”

“Repaired… Where would he get repaired at?”

“…hospital?” I say with a bend of my eyebrows. My vision got a bit hazy for a second. Fuck, I think I’m losing too much blood.

“Let’s head there, then,” Ray tells me. “If we don’t find Mikey, at least we can get you help.”

I start laughing. Like that’ll happen…

“I mean it, Frank. You got shot three times. And look how much you’ve bled out!”

I roll my eyes. “Stop being such a mother, Ray–whoa!”

Ray had stood up really fast and dragged me up with him by my shirt collar. “That’s enough. We gotta get out of here. Now which way do we go?”

“You know, that exit sign might just be a clue…” I say as I point with my eyes toward the small green lights spelling “EXIT”.

“Good,” Ray answers as he starts walking, dragging me along with him.

“I can walk, Toro!” I mutter at him.

He ignores me and continues to pull me by my shirt collar. “Remind me to punch you once your wounds are healed,” he snaps back at me.

The exit doors led to a staircase, which led to a backdoor exit from SCARECROW headquarters. It was like three in the morning, so no cars were out now on the desolate streets.

Still… guards were out at this time, and BL/ind has cameras everywhere. Our every move on the streets can be monitored. It’s Big Brother come to life.

Which is why Toro and I decide to take to the sewers for the night.

“You remember your way around these sewers, Ray?” I ask as we descend into the dark, chemical and shit-filled tunnel. Luckily the sewers in here had small lights put up every few yards, illuminating our way.

“Well…it’s been a few years… but I think I can navigate us. The hospital’s supposed to be like 16 blocks down from SCARECROW. That shouldn’t take us very long to get there,” Ray replies.

“Good… let’s get going,” I say as I follow Ray.

He stops and turns around. “Hey, you’re sounding worse. You sure you don’t want to rest up first?”

Truth be told, I was starting to feel a bit clammy. “Nah, Ray. We gotta get to Mikey first.”

Ray gives me that concerned look on his face, that makes me feel simultaneously loved and guilty.

“I don’t want you to die on the way there…” he tells me with a stare.

“I’m not gonna die, Toro! If anything, I’m gonna die from you being an overconcerned friend! So let’s just–” Unintentionally, I started wretching. It felt like something might come up from my stomach, kind of like being sick in the stomach, except this felt more like the nausea/fainting combination. I put a hand over my mouth, as if that will make it stop.

“Goddamnit, Frank, I’m not letting you move any farther until you get some rest.” Ray comes over to me and tries to put a hand across my shoulder.

I yank my shoulder away and start backing up. “No, Ray. I don’t care if I die as long as I get Mikey out of there. Now just…ugh…”

…everything’s looking darker…

“Frank!”

  
  


  
  


I’m sweating. And hot as fuck. And it smells…oh god…

I blink open my eyes.

Shit–I’m still in the sewers.

Where’s Ray?

I can feel the soreness right above my clavicle and my stomach. I turn my head and try to lift it up without causing anything else to hurt more.

I don’t have my vest or my shirt on. A bandana, Ray’s bandana, is wrapped around my shoulder and clavicle. I feel another bandana wrapped around my neck. And my shirt is wrapped around my stomach.

Ugh, the dank smell in here is getting to be too much. Where the hell is Ray?

I look around me and all I see is dark cement tunnel space with dark water running just a few feet away from me down in the sewer canal.

Damn it, we don’t have time for this…

I turn on my side, placing my palms on the cement to get myself up. Fuck, this is actually a bit tiring.

Body, just please…wait. Feel free to give up and croak on me, but not before we save Mikey and Gerard!

I’m panting now, having gotten my upper body off of the ground.

*CLANG*

I whip my head to the right, wondering who the fuck’s coming down. Better get my ray gun out.

There are subsequent clangs followed by footsteps. I have my ray gun in hand now, held just in front of my chest.

The footsteps get louder and closer.

“Frank!” Oh, thank god, it’s just Ray…

The walking footsteps turned into running footsteps, and the image of a dashing, bearded, curly long-haired man with an eyepatch and a leather jacket enters my vision. Motherfucker really does look like a fucking pirate, hahaha.

“Hey man, you shouldn’t be sitting up like this, you’re gonna start bleeding again,” he told me as he knelt down close to me.

“I’ll be fine, Toro,” I dismiss. “Where the hell have you been?”

Ray tightens his mouth and stares at me, and I can tell he’s still a bit annoyed with me. “I’ve been up on the surface, looking for anything that might help us.”

“On the surface?! Are you crazy? You could have been killed or something!” Now it was my turn to get angry. Ray should have known better than to go off on his own.

Ray snorts out a laugh. “Like you would be saying any different if it was you had gone up there by yourself… Anyway, this city’s been cleaned up good. Literally no one on the streets, no hobos, no junkies, no dealers, no hoodlums… the only people really around are the police and the shop owners. It’s really fucking weird, man…”

“What exactly were you hoping to find?” I ask.

“Tranexamic acid,” Ray replies with a calm face.

“Tranexamic acid? The fuck is that?”

Ray smiles. “Tran-X. It’s a drug that’s supposed to prevent hemmhoraging and stop bleeding. It’s been used on the war battlefield for soldiers, and since the influx of the legalization of previously illegal drugs in Battery City, it’s been on pharmacy shelves and used in hospitals, sometimes sold at your everyday drug store.”

I raise an eyebrow. “And you’d know this because…”

“Keeping up with the latest in technology has always been a hobby of mine, you know that. Back in the Rebellion days, one of the guys I knew in my district was a doctor, he was all over distributing this to Killjoys, predicting the violent war we’d be having with BL/ind. But he died before he even got out to the Zones.”

I nod my head in silence.

“Anyway, I didn’t have any luck,” Ray continues as he puffs out a sigh. “You were bleeding too much, and that’s why you fainted. You’re lucky those lasers only burned so far into your skin, and that you have this layer of fat protecting your stomach. The wound on your neck’s just a surface wound, but that was bleeding a lot, so I wrapped it up for you. It should heal fine, though. I can’t say as much for the wound up there.” Ray was pointing at the wound just above my clavicle. “That looks complicated.”

“I feel fine,” I answer with an annoyed twitch of my eyebrows. But truth be told, it was a little harder to move my left arm because of the shot above my clavicle.

“Regardless, I think you should get checked out at the hospital. We’re going there anyway…”

“Are you fucking serious?” I almost laughed.

“Is that such a crazy idea?” Ray asks as he put his hands up.

“YES,” I answer with a fervent nod.

“There’s universal healthcare in this city, Frank. No one’s going to ask you for your information if you go in bleeding like you already are.”

“You really think we can just walk into a hospital, get me stitched up and have everything be fine??? Like no one’s not going to recognize us? Like no one’s not going to call up SCARECROW or shoot us?”

Ray shrugs, looking off to the side.

I sigh and put my palms over my face. I don’t have to go along with his plan. But we’re heading over to the hospital no matter what. So I guess no matter what we decide to do once we get there, it’s gonna be risky.

Fuck it all.

I hear Ray sit back against the wall before I take my hands off my face. He looks tired, and dirty, and sweaty, and… he’s probably been worrying his head off about me.

“Sorry,” I mutter out while looking over at him.

He turns my way, his curls shaking in the process. He makes a smirk at the edges of his mouth. “It’s all good, man. Don’t worry about it.”

I sigh as I look down. “Nah, I’m being a little shit right now. Sorry.”

We’re both quiet for a bit.

“Hey, what time is it anyway?” I finally ask.

“The sun’s been set for over an hour now. So probably about 7 o'clock.”

“7 o'clock?! At night?! You mean we’ve been here for almost a day?!”

Ray sighs, “Look, you were passed out the entire time. I wasn’t going to try and wake you up until I was sure you were alright.”

I shake my head. “Well, none of that matters anymore! We gotta get going and get to the hospital and save Mikey!”

“I think we should rest until you’re good to go,” Ray tells me as he puts a hand on my shoulder.

“I’m fine! And if we don’t hurry and get to the hospital, Mikey’s not gonna be! So we should get moving!”

Ray stares at me with a dark look, weighing what I just said in his mind. “Don’t make me regret this, Frank. If something happens to you–”

“Then it’ll happen. I’m done with waiting. Gerard and Mikey are in the hands of BL/ind right now. The very last place any of us would want to be. We have to get them out,” I say with a final stare of my own.

Ray breathes out heavily. “Alright. Follow me. While I was out, I was also checking out where these sewers led to, to make sure they hadn’t changed. And luckily, they haven’t.”

Ray helped me get my shirt and vest back on, and then we set off to walk toward the hospital.

It didn’t take long to get there, maybe a little over an hour. When we got above ground, we were actually in the back of the hospital, where the emergency entrance is. No one else was in sight except for two orderlies dressed in white, standing at either side of the wide glass doors.

“Remember what I told you, and just follow my lead,” Ray whispers to me before we start heading toward the emergency entrance.

My heart is pounding. Are we really going to be able to just casually walk up in here?

All is quiet except for the *CLOP* *CLOP* *CLOP* of mine and Ray’s boots echoing on the cemented ground.

As we near the entrance, the two orderlies send an eye toward us.

“Evening, gentlemen!” Ray tells them with a cheerful, toothy smile.

And we keep walking on.

The orderlies had narrowed their eyes, obviously wondering what two dirty, bloodied up guys in biker clothes were doing here. What we were doing in Battery City, period.

But they don’t pursue us.

*WHIRR*

The glass doors open to either side and we walk into the pristine air-conditioned oasis, harbingered by death hanging around each perfectly white, perfectly square corner.

I fucking hate hospitals.

Inside the Emergency waiting room–because even though you have an emergency , you still gotta wait for a doctor to not be busy to save your life–there was furniture, different palletes of cream and beige, solid, geometrical looking furniture that was all just so perfect. There was a lack of that particular old, gross, scent that hospitals usually have stuffing up every cubic space of air. But what was even worse than that was the still-present smell of plastic and latex that plugged up your nose from the second you walked into a hospital.

No one else is in here, besides two nurses at the desk.

Ray turns to me and gives me a glance with his bright, but tired, brown eye. I follow him to the desk.

The nurse we see first is a small, somewhat pretty woman who looks like she’s in her early twenties. Artificial blonde highlights against her honey, light brown hair. Freckles all over her full, heart-shaped face, and underneath her skinny, rounded eyebrows are gray eyes, not soft, but alert. From her name tag, I assume her name’s Jessica.

She’s looking down at files of some sort until Ray clears his throat.

She looks up. “Yes? May I help you?”

She had said that in a composed tone before she actually looked at us. And then immediately after, those skinny eyebrows tilted downward.

“Hi, uh, my friend and I–” Ray starts in this phony, playful voice, “We thought it might be fun to, you know, dress up and play a little game of Dracs and Killjoys–our other friends were the Dracs, we were the Killjoys–but things got out of hand and now…”

“I’m hurt real bad…” I say with my best attempt at giving a weak voice and strained eyes.

The girl stands up, her nose wrinkling in distaste. “You were playing 'Dracs and Killjoys?’”

Ray laughs. “It’s fun, you know, and helps us with training.”

“And you used real ray guns?” the girl asks again, her expression hardening.

She’s not an idiot, I can tell that…

“Well, it makes it more realistic and exciting!” I chime in with a smile, hoping to fool her anyway.

It’s quiet.

Still quiet.

Oh god, she’s just glaring at us and it’s still quiet. We’re fucked.

“Idiots,” she finally sneers at us. “What the hell are you doing playing games like that? You’re lucky you weren’t killed!”

I give my best phoney shrug, forgetting that it actually hurts my left shoulder when I do that. “Ah…” I groaned out, not on purpose this time.

She breathes out a sigh. “Let me get a doctor on site immediately. You look like you’ve lost too much blood already.”

She reaches down, grabs the phone, and dials several keys in less than two seconds. “Dr. Schlossman? Yes, I have a patient for you…Gun wounds…Well, I don’t…” She turns to us. “Are you two a part of the police unit?”

Ray looks at me and I look at him.

“We’re…still in the academy…” Ray responds.

The nurse lifts her eyebrows quickly and talks back into the phone “They’re just academy students. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Yes. We don’t have time for an examination, from the looks of it. Yes, sir. Goodbye.”

She hangs up the phone and looks back at us. “We’re going to get you checked out as soon as we can, sir. Just fill out this paperwork for me and then–”

“Fill out paperwork?!” Ray had protested in this horribly exaggerated voice, I almost burst into laughter. “He’s been shot like three times–we don’t have time for this!”

“Sir, it’s simply protocol–all patients have to–”

“Look, get my friend the help he needs! Now! I thought this was an emergency room, not the DMV!”

Feeling flustered, the nurse turns to her colleague, who had been idly staring at her computer’s screen for the last five minutes. “Maggie, take over for me here.” Maggie is an older woman who has curly red hair and a round button nose. Her small eyes convey nothing.

“You’re coming with me,” the young nurse tells me as she starts walking around her desk area to get on our side.

I shift a quick glance to Ray.

“Good luck,” he whispers to me.

“You too,” I whisper back.

Nurse Jessica takes me by the arm–feels too rough for the patient I’m supposed to be, in my opinion.

Just a few seconds later, a group of four nurses comes in with a padded gurney. I feel my heart drop. Fucking hospitals…

“We’re going to need you to lie down, sir,” my no-nonsense nurse orders me.

I do as told, since I don’t want to create more of a fuss than necessary.

Before I know it, I’m being quickly wheeled down the corridor while two nurses get to work stripping me of my vest and shirt, and nurse Jessica starts questioning me.

“What’s your name?” is the first question.

Fuck.

“Sir, what is your name?”

“Frank Sinatra,” I cheekily reply.

“Very funny,” my nurse mutters.

It’s only a half-lie…

“Well, Mr. Sinatra, where are you?”

“What–why are you asking–”

“Where are you?”

“I’m in the hospital.”

“In what city?”

“Singapore!”

Nurse Jessica glares at me.

“Battery City… where the hell else?” I say with a bitter tone.

“And do you have or have you had in the past any of the following diseases: Tuberculosis, Hepatitis A, B, C, Huntington’s, diabetes, HIV…”

“I’m all good, Doc. No blood diseases for me.”

We go through a few more rounds of these questions until I’m put into a room, where they start attaching these sticky wires to my skin and take off the makeshift bandages Ray used on me.

“Stay still,” one of the male nurses said just before punching a needle on the inside of my elbow.

“Ow!” I cried out. “What the fuck is this?”

“Tranexamic acid. Stops the bleeding,” the same nurse replied just before he whisked away.

Tranexamic acid. How had I never heard of it?

A few of the nurses got their heads up close to the wounds, which didn’t look that bad, except for all the blood. But they cleaned that all up.

“Dr. Schlossman will be here soon to take care of you,” nurse Jessica tells me. “You have vital tissue that’s been ruptured above your clavicle and your lower abdomen, and we need to make sure that no internal bleeding has occurred. After that, Dr. Schlossman will determine the extent of any surgery necessary.”

“And then?” I ask.

“And then you’ll either go to surgery or not, get bandaged up, and then you can go home.” She leaves without another word, as do the other nurses.

Now it’s time for the waiting game. Ray was supposed to get the check-in info from the front desk to see if indeed Mikey was in here, and where. My whole stint as a patient was just a diversion.

Five minutes a later, an older, white, balding guy comes in the room with this long white coat on. Dr. Schlossman, I presume. After him comes two young guys in dark gray scrubs.

“Hello, Frank.”

“Hi, doctor…” I try to look cheerful despite how much I want to get out of here.

“I must say–big fan of your music–you’re looking well for your age–how long has it been since you’ve been dead? About twenty years?”

At first I was confused, wondering if he actually knew who I was–but then I remembered that I had told the nurse that Frank Sinatra was my name.

He makes an obnoxious laugh. “Oh, I’m just joshing ya!”

I make an uncomfortable, forced laugh.

“Now, we heard all about your little mishap and we’re here to make sure nothing too serious happened to you.”

God, just fucking kill me. Asshole’s being patronizing as fuck.

“Great,” I reply, trying to smile. Not sure if I can keep this up much longer.

His two assistants get this weird, flat, screen thing that looks kind of like a computer flat screen. They hold it up over my stomach as the doctor pushes a button on one of its sides and leans over me.

The screen started lighting up, I could see in the reflection of Dr. Schlossman’s glasses.

He presses another button and looks at it for another few seconds. “So far, so good…” he mutters.

The two assistants move the weird device over near my shoulders and the doctor does the same thing.

He starts writing down on this small pad he had taken out from his coat pocket.

“Okay, Frank! Looks like we’ve managed to prevent some internal bleeding, which is always good–but now we’re going to prep you so you can get glued and sewn up, okay?”

He says “okay” too much.

“Sure,” I reply.

“Okay! See you in a bit.”

With that, Dr. Schlossman and his assistants leave the room.

  
  
Ray’s been taking a while. I wonder if he was able to find out where Mikey was or wasn’t.

I roll myself off the gurney and rip the wires off of me. If something happened to Ray, it can only go downhill from here. I walk around to one of the sink counters where my clothes are, and pull on my shirt and vest–with pain. Ray kept my ray gun in case they would confiscate it from me.

I edge toward the door, peeking out to make sure no one’s walking by.

Coast is clear.

I start walking out, trying to make my steps quick, yet silent. Once I round the corner, I see a dark figure with curly hair coming my way–Ray!

“Ray!” I half call out and half whisper.

“Frank!” he returns in the same voice.

“Did you find it?” I ask him.

“Yep. At least I think so. There were only 15 patients checked in over the last 24 hours. And Mikey’s name wasn’t on the list, but there was one patient which they penned as 'John Doe’,” Ray answers.

I nod my head. “Hopefully that’s him, then. Let’s go.”

Ray starts walking in the direction I was initially going. “What happened with you? Was everything alright?”

“I’m fine,” I say with a flat tone. “I just need stitches.”

“That’s a relief. I should just let you stay and get the stitches then.”

“Oh, fuck off, Ray…” I say with a shake of my head.

He quietly chuckles in return.

After ten minutes of going down winding corridors, up elevators, and rounding corners, we finally reach the post-op wing where our John Doe is resting.

There’s no one in this wing at the moment.

“Hey, don’t you think it’s a little weird that no one’s here?” I ask Ray.

Ray smiles. “There’s a reason they’re not here.”

I cock one eye at Ray, hoping he won’t be so obnoxious and not explain that smug look on his bearded face.

“I made a little phone call,” he replies. “Nurse Jackie isn’t going to be here for a while because she has a bouquet of roses waiting for her to be picked up on the ground level, and in her words 'No, I’m not too busy to take a break’.”

I let out a “hmmph” as I tilt my head. Good on Toro, getting that done…

His smile fades. “We need to hurry. That nurse isn’t going to be gone forever.”

We start walking down the dimly lit corridors, noting the absence of anyone at all. I guess they don’t have many patients to be operated on.

Ray points us in the right direction, once he sees the group of numbers containing the room that Mikey might be in. Another twenty feet and there was the room, 1840.

We walk into the room and inside we see just one bed lit up. Underneath a white sheet and a tangle of clear tubes and various colored wires is a body.

I look back at Ray, who’s giving me the same look of apprehension.

I turn back and start walking up toward the bed, this time so I can get a good look at the face of who’s in it.

It’s definitely Mikey.

His eyes are closed, so he must be sleeping. All that makes a sound is the soft beep every second and a half, that signals each time his heart beats.

“Oh god…do you see that?” I ask Ray, pointing toward Mikey’s head. On the right side of his scalp are several staples across a small buzzed section, just underneath where the gold and brown of his hair separated.

“Fuck…” Ray whispers beside me.

I get up close to the right side of the bed, looking at the grand number of tubes wrapping around Mikey’s arms and chest.

“Should we wake him up?” Ray asks.

I nod. “Of course we should. Hey, hey Mikey,” I say as I gently place my hand on his arm, slightly shaking it.

He doesn’t move.

On no, please don’t tell me you’re in a coma…

“He’s not waking up…” Ray remarks.

I swallow and shake my head. “Look, it doesn’t matter. Either way, if he wakes up or not, we’re getting our brother out of here,” I reach down for the first few wires. “Help me out, Ray.”

Ray comes forward to the left side of the bed and we start taking out the wires, unfolding the sheet from Mikey, so we can get the wires off that are glued to him to check his pulse and other body function levels.

The last thing to get out is the IV in Mikey’s left wrist. I gently peel the tape off of the back of his hand and grip the IV, pulling out the needle as fast as I could so I didn’t tug on Mikey–

“AhhhhhhhhhHH!”

FUCKING MOTHERFUCKING FUCK

My own heart died and resurrected and died again at hearing that scream.

Mikey had started kicking out his legs and whipped his arms around, hitting my ribs in the process.

“Mikey, it’s Frank and Ray!” I holler to overpower his screaming as I place a hand firmly on his left arm.

“Wahhhhh…. Frank? Ray?” He sounds out of it as his eyes are slightly open, looking over at me.

“Hey buddy,” Ray says in his calm voice. How the fuck did he always keep his cool?

Mikey swallows. “What are you guys doing? Wait…what am I doing here?” He starts looking around him and down at the tubes in his arms. “What the… why am I in the hospital?”

“We’re still in Battery City,” Ray responds in his calm and collected voice. “Grace is safe, though.”

Mikey narrows his eyes. “Battery City? Why would Grace not be safe? Just….what? And what happened to your face, Frank?”

I put a hand up to my face, trying to feel for any new wound. I don’t remember getting hit in the face, just my neck…

“Mikey, don’t you remember what happened at SCARECROW?” I ask him.

He eyes widen as he looks up at me. It wasn’t like the stupid doe-eyed dazed look he used to have when he’d wake up in the old touring van and find himself in a new state. There was something else in his dilated eyes. In the grimace of his jaw. In the tautness of his eyebrows. In the way he looked at me without really looking at me.

Oh no.

Oh no, no, no, no, no.

He has no fucking idea where he is.

And when I say no fucking idea, I really mean NO. FUCKING. IDEA.

I get close to Mikey and gently place my hands on his shoulders, looking him in the eye, giving him my best reassuring smile. “Mikey, we’re going to get you dressed up and we’re gonna get out of here, soon as possible. 'Kay?”

He blinks his wide eyes and twitches his head into what I take as a nod.

“Okay!” I say with a light pat on his right arm. I go to fetch his clothes, which are oddly folded up on one of the cabinets. BL/ind surgeons are pretty fucking considerate…

“Mikey, what did they do to you?” I hear Ray ask.

Damn it, Ray… Don’t fucking ask him that!

“…what? They? Who’s they?” Mikey questions in response with a wavering voice. I had just grabbed the clothes when I zipped back to Mikey.

“Put your pants on,” I tell Mikey as I drop them on his lap.

“I’m naked…?” he mutters out as he looks down at the slit hospital gown.

I ignore the unnerving tone of that to push Ray aside.

“Shut the fuck up, Ray!” I whisper through my teeth.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” he asks in return with creased eyebrows.

I quickly glance back at Mikey, who is just getting his boxers on under his gown. I turn back to Ray. “He doesn’t know where he is,” I hush out.

“Well yeah, he probably didn’t wake up from getting knocked out until just now–” Ray whispers back.

“No, Ray,” I growl. “I mean he doesn’t remember. _Anything_. He doesn’t remember anything!

"Oh…” He looks over behind me at Mikey. I turn around. Mikey isn’t facing us, luckily.

“Yeah, so don’t ask him about it!” I hush out.

“But he’ll probably remember if we just remind him–”

“Ray, when have you ever seen Mikey look that scared? And the fucking sutures on the side of his skull? Something’s seriously fucked with his head. Tell me, does my face look any different to you than it did yesterday?”

Ray looks over my face and answers, “No.”

“Well, Mikey thinks it does…” I tell him, raising an eyebrow.

Ray’s eyes widened as he finally got it.

“Oh my god.” I whip around after hearing Mikey say that. He had just taken off his hospital gown.

“Oh my fucking–what the fuck?!” Mikey exclaims with his hands on the sides of his head. Right where it was buzzed. Fuck.

He glances and turns toward us. “Guys, what the fuck is wrong with my head?! Why…is my head shaved?!” He runs his hands through his hair in a frenzy while tears spill out of his eyes.

“And this bandage on my shoulder…” He looks over and meets my gaze. “Frank, what the fuck happened to me?!”

I rush forward and wrest Mikey’s hands from his head. They’re trembling. “Mikey, listen to me…” I say in a voice as calm as possible. “We’re going to get out of here. That’s priority number one. It’s okay. You’re okay. We’re all going to be okay.”

MIkey is still sniveling when he asks, “Where’s Gee? Why–why isn’t he here?” He looks between me and Ray.

None of us can answer that.

I can see the anxiety rising in Mikey’s body as his eyes grow bigger and he starts breathing in more shallow breaths, the blood leaving his face.

“Where the fuck is Gerard?!” Mikey yells. He starts to take in these huge breaths, huffing and puffing air. “Oh my god. Oh my god, oh my god, oh god, oh god, oh god, oh my god!”

Mikey is a complete mess now. His face is completely drenched in his own tears. And while I hate to see him cry, we really don’t have the fucking time for this…

I let go of Mikey’s hands and grab the sides of his face in a tight hold, so he’s forced to look at me.

“Mikey. I know it’s hard and I know everything’s confusing right now and you’re scared, but you’re going to have to calm down. Just take in slow breaths. Okay, breathe with me through your nose…” I take in a deep breath, keeping it in for a few seconds. Mikey follows my lead as he stares at me with bloodshot eyes.

“…Now release,” I say through my exhale.

Mikey puffs the air back out through his nose.

“Slowly, and through your mouth this time,” I quickly add. “Now breathe in again…” I breathe in as Mikey does. “…and slowly exhale….” I say through my breath. Mikey slowly lets the air out through his pursed lips.

“Now let’s just do this a few more times,” I tell him before we do this breathing exercise a few more times. It was one of the breathing exercises we learned to help with his anxiety all those years ago. So he could get through the panic attacks.

Eventually, Mikey calms down so I let go of him. He wipes the tears off his face with the back of his thumb.

Ray comes forward to me. “What do we do now?”

“We find Gerard now,” I reply as I pick up Mikey’s jacket. “Put on your jacket. We gotta move.”

“What–where are we going?” Mikey asks.

“We’re gonna find your–” I was cut off with the sound of a siren.

Fuck. That’s the same siren that blares anywhere in Battery City when trouble is coming for you. The siren of SCARECROW.

“We have to get out of here, agents are coming!” Ray hushes out as he brings Mikey’s boots to him.

“Agents?” Mikey asks in a panic.

“…We’ll just get rid of them, easy. We have to focus on finding Gerard,” I reply as I peek my head out of the doorway to the room. No one was coming down these empty halls yet.

“Do you have any idea where he could even be?” Ray asks with an edge of retort as he comes close to me.

I tighten my lips. “No, Ray…but that’s not gonna stop me from looking in every place I can until I find him.”

“What the hell happened to Gerard?” Mikey asks, looking down as he puts his second boot on.

I hesitate before I look back. I don’t know what to tell him.

“Look, I can handle it! What I can’t handle is you and Ray being oddly fucking secretive!” Mikey yells.

I walk over to Mikey and grab his arm. “Uh…I don’t think you _can_ handle it, Mikey. Now let’s get going.” I quickly start walking out of the room so we can get moving ASAP.

“Frank, don’t be rude!” Ray scolds me as he marches after us.

“I’m not being rude–we have more important things to do than talk–”

“Tell me what the fuck happened to my brother, Frankie!” Mikey had grabbed my collar with both of his hands and slammed me against the wall, his angry face just a couple inches from mine. His nostrils are flaring.

“He’s fine, Mikey–”

“Are you for real gonna be this much of an asshole?”

“Fine. You wanna know what happened–he got shot!” I shout out. “And you’d know that if you fucking remembered anything within the past 24 hours…”

Mikey’s eyes widen and I can see the color drain out of his face as his grip on my collar slackens.

“You two, just knock it off!” Ray got in between me and Mikey, pushing him by his chest and keeping a palm on my left shoulder. Mikey continued to stare at me with that creeped out look.

I look down and sigh. “Fuck… I’m sorry, Mikey. I shouldn’t have told you like that.”

“Something’s wrong with my head, huh?” he quietly asks as he looks down.

Neither Ray or I respond.

“Why can’t I remember what happened to Gerard? Or what I’m doing here and how I got these wounds?” Mikey repeats as he darts his glistening eyes between us. “Why?!”

“We don’t know what happened to you, Mikey…” Ray starts with a quiet voice.

Mikey runs a hand through his head, stopping once he feels the sutures on his scalp. He starts breathing heavily again, this time with an angry expression in his eyes.

“FUCK!!!!!” he cries out as he sends a fist into the wall behind him.

“MIkey…you gotta calm down,” I tell him as I tentatively get near him.

He sobs out, “Why did this happen? _How_ did all this happen?” After a pause, he quietly asks, “Can’t we just go home?”

I feel the tears come into my eyes. “We’re gonna go home,” I choke out. “After we get you out of here and find Gee, we’re gonna go home.”

Mikey nods fervently while staring at me with tearstained cheeks. “Okay.”

After a few seconds delay, I direct to Ray, “Do you know how to get out of here?”

Ray takes in a breath. “I think so, but if we got agents coming after us, I don’t know if going out the main door is going to be so easy.”

“Well…then you take Mikey with you and get out any way you can while I go find Gerard.”

Ray gives me a glare from his uncovered eye. “What?”

It was an angry “what.”

“Look, I’m not leaving until I get Gerard out of here. You can get yourself and Mikey to safety while I–”

“You don’t even know where he is, Frank!” Ray snapped at me.

I can feel the blood boiling in my chest.

“We didn’t know where Mikey was, but we found him! We can find–”

“Gerard wasn’t on the list! And there was only one John Doe, and that was Mikey. He’s not here,” Ray argued.

I can feel my jaw clench. “You don’t know that, Ray.”

“Yeah, well neither do you! We should at least get out of here and then maybe come back or have another plan when we actually know something–we’re just wasting time arguing here!”

“She said that they had big plans for Mikey and Gerard! That means he’s alive!”

He’s got to be here… He’s got to be here… Where else would they take him? Only if he was dead, they would take him to…

“The morgue,” I say aloud.

Ray gives me that grumpy gaze of his while Mikey looks confused and distressed at his side of the corridor.

“He’s got to be in the morgue–there were no living patients registered here as John Doe besides Mikey, but the morgue–”

“Frank, just quit with the speculating–we have to get out of here!” Ray had yelled at me.

“Mikey, don’t you want to look for Gerard?” I ask, turning toward him for help.

Mikey looks at me speechlessly, with a crease on his forehead.

“Leave Mikey out of it,” Ray argues as he gets real close to me. “If we don’t get out of here soon, we’re not going to be alive to find Gerard, wherever the hell he is.”

“Yeah, no thanks to you,” I sneer.

“What do you mean?” Ray angrily asks.

“I mean you and your shittily made out plans–we were only up here five minutes and already the siren went off–”

“Well if you hadn’t just run off from getting stitched up this probably wouldn’t have happened–”

“Well, if you had done a better job with the nurses down there–”

“Shut the fuck up!”

It was Mikey who yelled last. He was breathing heavily again.

“I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t even know why we’re here in the first place–and you guys arguing isn’t helping at all! So can we please just get the fuck out of here?!”

He has tears in his eyes again and I can see him shaking.

Ray turns back to me. “We’re leaving.” He takes a hold of Mikey by the shoulder and starts leading him back in the direction we first came from

I start following, too…

We get as far back to the elevator just outside of the post-op wing. Luckily, the elevator still works, but what might happen when we get down to another floor is another story.

“If we press all the lower levels, they’re not going to know where we get off,” I suggest to Ray and Mikey. “We can get off of one of those levels and then take the stairs down.”

They nod in accord and we go through with my plan.

3rd floor is where we really get off. Once the sliding elevator door opens, no one is outside of it.

“Come on,” I say as I quickly get out of there.

Mikey wasn’t feeling too well, so Ray had to help him hurry up a bit, keeping an arm across his shoulder. Once we found a map of the floor, we walked and walked and walked to finally find the staircase, which we took to the ground floor, where it stopped. We would have to cross the floor to get to any of the exits now.

The only problem is there are agents here.

I turn toward Ray and Mikey. “I’m gonna cover you guys as best as I can when we get through here. Ray, you just get Mikey out of here–”

“You’re still thinking of looking for Gerard, aren’t you?” Ray asks with a glare. In the dim stairwell, I can still see the shine of his angry eye.

I slightly groan. “Just focus on getting out for now. No matter what we do, we’re gonna have to get past those agents.”

Ray and Mikey nod. We all get our ray guns out, preparing to go down the wide, white hallway that will eventually lead to our exit route.

We step out cautiously, no one in sight yet. The only sounds we can hear are the sounds of our shoes scuffing the linoleum.

And then before we can prepare, a couple BL/ind agents round the corner and face us.

“Stop! And put down your weap–ugh!” I shot down the agent before he could continue, while Ray shot down his partner.

“This way!” one of the fallen agents yelled while down on the ground.

I turn quickly towards Ray, “Let’s keep running down this corridor before they catch up! It’ll lead to that waiting room!”

We start running as we hear an army of feet clapping across the linoleum not too far behind us.

I look to the walls, seeing if there’s any small hallways, or anything we can–Aha!

“Ray, get that fire extinguisher!” I call out to him.

He shoots at the glass encasing the fire extinguisher, and shatters it. I go up to the case and grab the red beauty. Without hesitation I crash it down onto the floor.

“What are you–” Mikey starts.

“You’ll see…” I tell him while standing here waiting for the agents to come around.

“Frank…” Ray starts in that overbearing maternal voice…

Four seconds later, the troop enters the corridor and that’s when I shoot at the fire extinguisher. The thing goes spinning into a frenzy, spitting out carbon dioxide in every dierection, clouding the entire hallway.

“Now, let’s get back that way!” I urge Mikey and Ray, as I pull us along, running right past the agents without them noticing.

But the fire extinguisher only has so much CO2 inside it…

We continue to run and we have no choice but to start shooting out at every agent we see.

*PEW*

*PEW*

*PEW*

There’s too many of them, jesus christ… The farther we walk, the more agents seem to be surrounding us–

“Damn…they won’t stop coming…” Ray growls out.

“Why are there so many?!” Mikey yelps.

We continue until we find ourselves in the Emergency waiting room again, where the nursing staff and even Dr. Schlossman are all standing by to see the commotion.

“It’s time for a hostage situation!” I whisper to Ray and Mikey as I start running forward. I shoot at the TV and around the electronics of the front desk, intentionally missing the staff.

“Ahh!” nurse Jessica shrieks and ducks down onto the ground with the rest of her colleagues.

The agents the closest to us start shooting and that’s when I run and hop over the desk myself, followed by Ray and Mikey.

“What are you doing?!” my nurse asks as I grab her by the wrist and lift her up.

“Stop shooting!” I holler as I stand up with nurse Jessica in front of me, holding her against me with my right arm hooking her in place.

“Cease fire!” one of the agents yells out. “He’s got a hostage!”

“Let me go!” the nurse yelps at me. She sends her fists jabbing into my ribs, but I take a hold of one of her arms and pin it against her back.

“Look, I’m sorry about this…but it’s really important that I don’t die and that me and my friends get out of here…” I whisper to her.

She continues to struggle against me. Ugh, I have no choice but to do this the hard way…

I move us out from behind the counter, Ray and Mikey following, with Dr. Schlossman and nurse Maggie in tow.

“Let us go and no one gets hurt!” I call out to the other agents. I start edging out closer and closer to the exit.

“Let go of the civilians! And stand aside–you are criminals and will be taken in–whether you put up a fight or not!”

“I don’t think so,” I reply as I start walking farther and farther towards the exit. The agents come closer and closer to us.

“You’re surrounded and outnumbered! And don’t think we won’t take a shot at you, even if you have hostages!” another close agent yells at us.

“Frank…this isn’t looking too good anymore,” Ray tells me as we edge out together.

“Yeah…it looks like you’re right,” I say as I shift my eyes back and forth. Any one of these agents, if they were a sharp shooter, they could kill us right now with how slow we’re moving.

“Take care of Mikey,” I urge towards Ray as I push my nurse forward into a throng of agents.

I leap forward and start shooting at as many agents as I can. “Get out of here!” I yell back at Ray and Mikey. I continue to go deep into the group of agents, if I get past them and lure them that way, Ray and Mikey can be safe–and then I can get around to exploring the morgue and–

“Ahh!” I turned around to see who had hit me right in my gun wounds.

_**It was Ray.** _

Ray had punched me full force in my stomach, right where I was shot.

“What the hell are you doing, Ray???” I can’t hold myself up anymore and start to fall.

“We’re leaving!” Ray yells as he practically does a chokehold on me with his large arm while shooting out around us. Mikey somehow ambles his way through the last of the agents covering the emergency entrance.

Once we’re all out, Ray drags me across the street, which is bathed in darkness, except for the blue SCARECROW sirens blinking on the streets. He practically shoves me down the sewer drain, where we first came up from. I fall on my side, hurting my wounds again. I’m followed by Mikey and then Ray as they lunge down.

“Come on,” Ray urges as he drags me up again from my shoulders, forcing me to run with him and Mikey.

It hurts again, in all my wounds, but none of that matters anymore. Now that we’ve just abandoned our best hope at finding Gerard.

“Why, Ray?!” I could hear my voice thick with tears. I hadn’t realized I was crying until just now.

I don’t think I’ve ever been this angry or pissed off at him in my life. He hurt me just so I wouldn’t go after Gerard–Ray, of all people, purposely injuring me so I didn’t do something I wanted to, that he had no right to dictate!

“Why didn’t you just fucking let me stay! I could have found him! He wasn’t dead! He’d be here with us!”

“No– _ **you’d be dead**_! If you went up against all the agents in the state you’re in now, you’d be dead! You can’t even put up a fight against me–you think you’re able to go up against 30 or 50 agents all by yourself?! Then go ahead and get yourself killed!”

It was quiet for a bit after this. I hate to admit it, but he’s right. If I can’t even fend him off, what’s the chance that I’d fend off that many agents?

“You’ve got a real problem with knowing your limits, Frank,” Ray grumbles in a quieter voice.

“That used to be a good thing,” I mutter in return.

“It’s not good if it kills you,” he replies.

We ran until we couldn’t run anymore, which was for about 20 minutes. Mikey wore out to the point that he needed to sit on the floor, and I was too tired to put up an argument with anyone anymore.

“We can’t stay in Battery City,” Ray said once we were all sitting and had caught our breath. “Any place we go, it’ll turn into a swarm of agents, just like that.”

“So what are you saying? We just leave Battery City and leave without Gerard?” I ask.

Mikey was looking down, with his knees pulled together.

“What choice do we have? We don’t know where Gerard is, and we have no idea where he might have been taken. We don’t even know if he’s alive,” Ray answers.

“He’s alive,” I correct.

“And your authority on that is all because some lady said she had big plans for him and Mikey? Did she say what these plans were?” Ray rose his eyebrows at me.

I turn and meet glances with Mikey, who’s staring at me now, too.

“Well… No,” I start. “But she was talking about them as if they were going to be working with her. Assets…they would become assets to her…she said.”

“That still doesn’t prove that Gerard is alive.”

“Why are you so strongly against the idea that Gerard is alive?! Do you want him to be dead?”

“Of course not. But I was there–I saw him get shot. We all saw–” Ray stopped once he had glanced at Mikey.

Yes, we all saw. Except one of us doesn’t remember that he saw it.

Mikey looks down. “You said he was shot.” He was quiet for another few seconds. “How are the rest of us still alive?”

I look down to the side. “Who knows, Mikey… Luck? We’ve risked a lot each time we’ve gone into battle and we always lucked out. I guess our luck finally ran out.” I pause. “Gerard just got cornered. By Korse. There was nothing we could do, it was in the heat of battle. None of us saw it coming.”

Mikey’s eyes widen. “Korse?! What the hell are we doing picking fights with Korse in Battery City?” He looks down again with a scowl on his face.

I look over at Ray. We don’t know how to explain this.

Ray sighs. “This is why we need to get out of Battery City. We need to recuperate before we even think about finding Gerard. Especially you and Mikey. Frank, you’re seriously injured. Mikey has some memory loss and he’s hurt…and I’m not strong enough to fight on my own against BL/ind. If we stay in Battery City, anything we do now will just be suicide. We can’t win.”

It’s silent.

None of us wants to look at the other.

We’re all in our own little dark world of turmoil in this dark and shit-smelling sewer.

Perfect setting for our predicament, by the way. Almost poetic.

  
  


So this is it.

We just give up like this.

We rescued Grace. Sort of.

And in return, we lost Gerard.

Defeat never dug a hole so deep in my heart.


	2. Chapter 2

_If the sun burnt my eyes,_   
_Would I still see the good in me?_   
_Don’t break my heart_   
_Would I still see the good-_   
_Wish I were a-_   
_I were a_   
_Ghost!_   
_Wish_   
_I were a_   
_Ghost._

 

* * *

 

 

It has to be ages since the last time these lyrics have crossed my mind.

But here I am, rubbing my wrists, looking at the tattoo that’s been there for…forever, as long as I’m concerned. And just now, those words I wrote so long ago are coming to me—hitting me like a ton of bricks. Not that I’d actually know what it feels like to be hit by a ton of bricks. Who the hell even came up with that expression? An unlucky construction worker–wrong time, wrong place?

Anyway—what am I saying “anyway” for, like I have an audience?

But anyway… those lyrics are hitting pretty close to the heart right now. When that sun comes up, another day begins. And all the sunshine in the world ain’t gonna make me see anything good about being here when I should be back there.

It’s not fair that I’m here.

Safe.

And Gerard’s…

I stand up and dust the gravel off of my pants. I don’t want to finish that thought.

I grab another cigarette from the box jutting out of my left vest pocket, fishing around for my lighter in the other. When I finally feel the steel under my fingertips, I pull it out, and something else falls out with it. It had landed on the ground, and in this pre-dawn twilight, I can barely see it.

  
I bend down, and pick up what looks like a piece of blackness—as if my own little black heart manifested through my chest and into my vest pocket. But no, it’s a piece of cloth, like a rag, or a–

How could I already have forgotten? It’s Leya’s. The piece of shirt she ripped off her own stomach just to give to me as a blood-stopper.

I had been so caught up with all the mad shit that’s been happening in the last 48 hours, I almost forgot about everything that happened with her. Hope that kid’s doing alright… I was surprised she hadn’t decided to stow away with us in the Trans-Am. And I’m so fucking glad she didn’t. She’d already been through enough.

I can’t believe I forgot about her. Even if it was only for a little while…

I feel a tug at my heart, or rather, at the black hole in my chest that’s replacing it. Have I become so heartless that I’m just hurting and forgetting everyone, and just… what the hell am I doing anymore?

 

I take another drag of my cigarette. The cold air mixes in with the tobacco in my lungs in a way that makes everything feel ghostly, as if I’m empty. I blow out the smoke, seeing it wither away in the wind.

The sky is turning purple now. It’s only a matter of time before I have to start another day with the whole gang. I heave out a big sigh, letting more smoke evaporate into the air. Maybe it’s bad of me to dread social contact with them, especially when they’re all I have left, but… there’s a valid explanation for that.

We haven’t spoken of that night since Dr. D picked us up from the borderlands just outside of Battery City. Ray hasn’t wanted to discuss a word about Gerard. And I’m a little guilty in not wanting to talk to Ray, since I’m still kind of pissed at him.

Mikey’s been too fucking traumatized by the whole thing to really even talk much to anyone about anything. Apparently, his memory loss is worse than we figured. He doesn’t seem to remember anything about the last two weeks, about how I got the scar on my face, why Ray was wearing an eye patch…or even about Grace ever getting kidnapped by Korse. According to him, the last concrete memory he has is the day we celebrated Grace’s birthday over here at Dr. D’s. That was six months ago. 

So it’s been difficult trying to let Mikey adjust to everything when Ray doesn’t want to talk about it. Not to mention, Mikey’s been feeling sick and disoriented since we left the hospital, so he’s been in bed the entire time. We’re hoping that it’s just the recovery process of whatever invasive surgery was performed on his head.

I argued that Mikey would want us to tell him the truth, but Ray has the inkling that all the bad news we tell Mikey will absolutely crush him and maybe actually kill him with the state he’s in.

I think that’s bullshit. But in the off chance that Ray is right…I don’t want to be any more responsible for the bad shape Mikey’s in, so we’re not discussing any of that with him until he’s better.

The only person I’ve really been able to talk to about anything is Grace.

I was so relieved to see that she hadn’t been harmed. And the thing about Grace is…she’s a hell of a kid, but she’s mature way beyond her years.

The way she asked “Where’s Party?” with that bright look of optimism, yet a waver of worry, I didn’t have it in my heart to tell her the truth–or to say anything at all. But she was so good…she just nodded her head and looked down. And then, those five little words she said: “It’s gonna be okay, Frankie.”

A part of me hugged her then mostly so I could let out a few tears without her seeing. And whether she noticed or not, she didn’t say anything about it. That kid is really something…

It’s funny how every time we have an extra member on the team–a girl, no less–we seem to do much better. It was that way when we were with Grace and it was that way when we were with Leya.

Grace is more like a calming force; she somehow brings reason and a unifying spirit to the band, kind of like this little angel watching over us. Leya, on the other hand, that girl’s like lightning. She’s a storm, she does what her heart tells her and lets nothing stop her, she takes action and–strike–like the spark of a match that strikes us into a flame, the way she moved us all.

They’re both good, strong girls. They’ve both been through battle with us, and have gotten us out of it for the better. But that’s over now.

Grace needs peace. She needs a family where she can still be a kid. She’s too good and innocent to be hurt from this world, so staying with us is not an option anymore. And even though I’m sure if I went back to Sweetwater and asked Leya if she wanted to go with me to Battery City, she’d say yes in a heartbeat… I wouldn’t do that to her. It wouldn’t be fair of me to do that when she finally has a home, a safe place to stay. 

Now all that’s left of us is a broken up crew without a captain or any angels to guide us in this fucked up world. These are pretty dark fuckin’ times, I tell ya…

 

Before I knew it, I had smoked far into my cigarette, only leaving a small bit charring from my mouth. I spit it out. And just as I’m thinking of taking out another one, I hear the crunch of dirt behind me.

“You’re up early.” It was Dr. D, rolling through the dirt. He looks tired. He’s been taking care of all of us, including myself. He and Show Pony helped stitch up and bandage my gun wounds the same day they picked us up.

“Yeah,” was all I replied to the man. I know he’s out here to try and talk to me, to have a heart to heart, but I’m not even sure I have a heart to do that with. And again, there’s this overwhelming feeling I have to run away, that’s making my hands twitch and my feet ache, as if I’m pulling against a force that wants me to move my legs and leave.

“Don’t you want to go inside, rest up a bit more?” D asks me. 

I softly shake my head. “I like it better out here.”

D reaches a hand up and pats my back. “Well, let me know if you want any tea or anything to keep you company.” He turns around and rolls his chair back through the dirt into his home.

The thing I appreciate about D is that he knows when to talk to you and when to let you be. It’s a rare quality in a person.

I sigh once more as I feel my hands move on their own toward the cigarette box in my vest again. I stop once I feel the top of the box and ball up my fist, lowering my arm.

This is getting me nowhere, and before I know it, I’m gonna be out of cigarettes.

I start walking.

I don’t know where I’m walking to, but all I know is that in this twilight, with the crispness of the air, the dirt crunching, the pebbles scattering, and the cactus plants lining my vision, I’m entering a space where I can be truly alone. That’s what I like about the desert–the solitude of it all. Especially when it’s dark like this, but not so dark that you can’t see in front of you, it’s like there’s no one else left in the world.

I’ve probably walked 50 paces before I feel the warm liquid rush up to my eyes, and I feel my face crinkle up without my consent. At least out this far and at this hour, no one is around to hear the embarrassing choking sounds I’m making with all my crying.

God, I wish I could just do something! Something other than cry and moan about this…

I don’t even bother wiping my eyes or my snot-leaking nose and keep walking. I’ll keep fucking walking until I reach the end of this world.

Until I find Gerard.

 

  
  


Well…eventually I walk back to Dr. D’s base because the sun comes up and I get hungry. D and Grace are in the small kitchen when I get back. The rest of the crew are still asleep.

“Frankie, look! We’re making pancakes!” Grace toots as she waves the rubber spatula in her right hand, the brightest smile on her face. She was always an early riser.

I smile at her. “Awesome, what are you gonna put in them?”

She turns back to the small frying pan she’s putting the batter in. “It’s a surprise…” she replies in a low, secretive voice.

I make a low laugh. “Okay, just don’t put nuts and bolts in it…”

I go sit over on one of the small plastic chairs that’s resting in the crowded room. This room isn’t exactly a kitchen, since it was just the oven that was here that resembled anything belonging to a kitchen. Small rectangular tables line the walls, mostly for doing handywork, for Dr. D’s research and radio stuff. This is the same room that has all the guns, weapons, and gear we use as Killjoys.

“Here, drink up.” Dr. D had rolled over to me in his electric chair and offered me a green ceramic mug full of something steaming. Probably tea. He’s all about tea, since he has loads of it stocked up. 

“What’s this?” I say as I take the ceramic mug. It’s a bit hot to the touch. I should probably put on my gloves…

“It’ll help with the healing process. Drink up,” D tells me with a cheerful face.

I shrug and take a swig. Tastes just like green tea. No sugar, though, so it’s a little bland.

D turns and goes over to help Grace with her pancakes.

I sit here and just watch them. D holds up a red plastic plate ready for Grace to clumsily flip over the finished pancakes onto it. The record player that is hidden somewhere behind the clutter in this room has been playing oldies from the 50’s and 60s, wholesome old stuff. Grace has been dancing a bit to it in between each flip she’s done. The sun is shining, illuminating the room in gold, making this an idyllic little scene.

*CLAP**CLAP**CLAP*CLAP*

“Okay, now you gotta try one!” Grace had come running in her small, pink flip flops and was holding up a cracked white plate to me, that had a brown little circle of a pancake in the middle of it.

I feel my lips turn up at the sides, so easily it felt like. I grab the plate. “Thank you very much!” I tell her as I set it down.

“You’re welcome!” she blurts out as she stares at me with her bright green eyes, looking like she’s ready to just burst with enthusiasm.

I make a small laugh and pick up the brown pancake, then take a bite into my mouth. It’s pretty normal tasting, and then I feel it burn the insides of my mouth.

“Oh gawd, ith thoo hoth!” I lisp out as I try to chew it down, despite the burning.

“Do you like it?!” Grace asks as she continues to stare at me.

Once I swallow down the flaming pancake piece, I answer, “let me wait a few seconds before it cools down so I can get a real taste.”

I wait a few seconds and Grace doesn’t move. Crazy kid.

This time I take another bite, and it tastes good, a bit spicy, like wood spicy…

“I like it…” I say after I swallow the bite down. I pick up the rest of the pancake and shove it in my mouth.

“Really?!” Grace exclaims with a little hop.

I laugh while I have the food still in my mouth. I nod my head in as exaggerating a motion that I can.

“You think Jet, Kobra, Pony, and Hot Chimp will like it too?” she asks.

“Of course they will! We like everything you cook,” Dr. D cuts in to tell Grace as he pats her on the shoulder.

She makes a beaming smile, showing off her small teeth. “I’ll get started on making some more then!”

 

 

 

 

  
  
The day goes on by as it usually did at Dr. D’s. The others eventually get up, have breakfast, Mikey goes to lie down in his bed, and then Show Pony and Hot Chimp go outside to play with Grace. Right now, it’s just me, Ray and Dr. D in D’s office. He said that he had a few things to discuss with us.

“What are ya’ll planning on doing now?” D. asks while sitting behind his desk. 

I look at Ray and he looks back at me. We haven’t actually spoken more than a few sentences to each other in the past 3 days we’ve been here. Not since our initial argument about telling Mikey the whole truth about what happened in Battery City, anyway.

“I mean, ya’ll can hang out here from now on. I know Mikey needs to the time to recover. But…there’s something you’re not telling me, huh?”

 At this point, both D and Ray are looking at me.

I uncross my arms. “Well, what are you looking at me for?”

Ray glares at me. The swelling on his eye had gone down, so he didn’t have to wear the eyepatch anymore. “You know why–you’re gonna go back for Gerard aren’t you?”

I narrow my eyes and make a throaty groan. I actually hadn’t made up my mind if I was going to yet, and I hadn’t said anything about it to anyone. But now that it’s out there as a supposed fact, well then, why the hell deny it?

“Well, what do you want me to do? How else can I possibly make the situation any better than it is now, Ray?” I bite back at him.

“Yo, calm down, guys…” D intervenes with a gesture of his hands motioning downward. “Now, you never actually finished explaining to me what happened back there–I had to hear it from poor little Grace that she saw Gerard and all the rest of ya’ll get shot. The two days you guys were running around after that, she was heartbroken.”

I’m looking down now, a bit ashamed of myself for bursting out. And for not being straightup with either D or Grace.

“Frank saw it all. You tell him what happened,” Ray quietly tells me without meeting my eyes.

I gulp. D keeps his eyes on me.

“Well… there were too many agents down on that ground floor. We were all split up, taking down agents, Gerard and Mikey teamed up while me and Ray took the rest out, and then all of sudden, I look up and Gerard is falling to the ground while Korse stands over him with a smoking gun. I think it’s pretty obvious what happened there…” I tried to say this without shaking at the memory.

“Yeah…I got that much from what Grace told me,” D responds as he folds his hands on his desk. “But what happened after? We came just in time to see Ray get blasted down before we picked up Grace, and left ASAP to protect her.” 

“This lady…some director or something, she was Asian, she came and noticed Mikey and said something about repairing him, and having plans for him and Gerard… and then fast forward and it’s me and Ray being sent to the furnace to be ‘disposed of’, but we get out of that, and then we go to the sewers, and then we go to the hospital, find Mikey, fight agents to get out of there, and then Ray drags me over to the sewers before I can even look for Gerard. That’s what happened.” I glare at Ray again. I’m still not over it, asshole. 

“There were too many agents and Frank was wounded. He would have been killed if I let him stay in there on a blind chase,” Ray argues while looking at me. 

“Alright, alright, stop yer jabbering…” D remarks. Ray and I give him our attention. He’s looking down and rubbing his beard. “You know where they took Gerard?”  
  
“I have an ide–” 

“No,” Ray interrupts me. I shoot a glare at him. “Frank doesn’t know, none of us know…”

Oh, fuck this.

“I have an idea!” I burst out. “If Gerard was dead and they had no more use of him, then he would have been sent with me and Ray down to the furnace. But he wasn’t! I know he’s alive! We just didn’t look hard enou–”

“You don’t have any proof,” Ray cuts in again. 

“Would you just let me fucking talk? Or are you gonna punch me again to stop me?” I sneer.

Ray’s eyes look like they’re on fire and I see him ball up his fists, like it’s not totally out of the question to punch me right now.

“Hey! You two little shits, stop with your bitching!” D yelled as he slammed a fist down on his desk.

“Sorry…” Ray quietly mumbles.

“Ay carumba, you make me want to shoot you myself!” D fumes as he looks down.

We stay quiet this time. 

“I think ya’ll need to understand that…Battery City thinks you’re dead. It was on the Battery City airwaves the night we picked you guys up. All four Killjoys slain. Everyone’s rejoicing,” D tells us with a flat face.

“Wait–still?” I stutter out. “I thought after we broke Mikey out of the hospital, it was pretty apparent to SCARECROW that we were actually still alive–” 

“Eh, I’m just telling you what I heard on the airwaves… And now that I hear that there are BL/ind agents that saw you guys alive…it’s just not adding up. Do you have any idea why BL/ind would want you guys all to be dead–but not dead?” D asks with a creased brow. 

Ray and I shrug. It _is_ weird…you’d think that there would be even more warrant signs up, bigger rewards, an all out SWAT search for us… 

“Hmmph,” D grumbles as he taps his hand onto the desk.

“This is why we need to go back to Battery City,” I tell Ray and D. “To get to the bottom of this, to find out what happened to Gerard–to get some fucking answers for once!”

Ray lets out an angry breath of air. “For the last time, Frank, it’s suicide. You’re not ready, Mikey’s not going to be ready any time soon, and–” 

“And you just want to give up without even trying,” I finish as I stare at Ray. He returns the stare, but it’s less vicious.

“I’m just trying to hold onto what we have,” Ray tells me as he crosses his arms.

I almost laugh. “Don’t give me that bullshit, Ray. We don’t have anything if we’re not all together–we don’t have anything when one of us is in the hands of the enemy!”

“So you never thought about what you’d do in case one of us died on the battlefield?” Ray shouts. “So Gerard is gone. Well…life goes on, Frank! Even if you manage to get to Battery City, what are you gonna do if you find out Gerard is really dead? Huh? What are you gonna do then?”

I whip around in a fury. “How dare you fucking talk about Gerard like that. Was he even a friend to you? A brother? You haven’t once seemed to feel bad about this whole thing. And you’re the only one so certain that he’s dead, and here you are just telling me that 'life moves on.’ If you’re so fucking eager to move on, why didn’t you just get yourself out and leave me and Mikey in Battery City? You should have let us die, so you could just _move on_ with your life!”

Ray stares at me for the longest time without responding. I see his eyes get a little red. 

“So that’s what you think? That I don’t care that one of my best friends is probably gone forever? You think I care more about myself than you, Mikey, and Gerard?” He pauses. “All these years together…and you don’t know me at all.”

With that, Ray turns and leaves the room.

Fuck my stupid black heart. The tingly, aching feeling returns to my limbs. I have to get the fuck out of here. I turn and leave without saying another word to D.

I don’t know if I’m planning on talking some more to Ray, I don’t even know where the fuck he went… I should have known better than to say that shit like some angst-ridden adolescent. I’m just fucking up everything now…

I stalk back through the rooms of D’s base until I bump into something. It’s only when I look up that I notice it was Mikey I bumped into. He’s standing and looking down at me with a puzzled look in his eyes.

“Hey…” I start as I gently pat his arm, which I apparently bumped into. “What are you doing up?” 

“I’m feeling a little better,” he answers as he adjusts the gray t-shirt he’s wearing–borrowed from Show Pony, which made it form fitting. “I was just looking for everyone. And then I saw Ray walk out of here. Is everything okay between you guys?”

I look down.

Mikey sighs. “Look, if it’s about me in any way, just stop. I don’t need you guys feeling sorry for me.”

“That’s not it, Mikey,” I quickly reply. “And no one’s feeling sorry for you. We’re all just worried because of how sick you are.”

“Right. And that’s why you haven’t talked to me in two days…” he mutters as he gives me a stare.

I’m speechless. I don’t know how to argue that.

Mikey shifts his eyes. “I don’t like this. I don’t like how we’re all drifting apart, and how no one’s talking to me, treating me like I’m some fucking invalid.”

“You _**are**_ an invalid.”

Mikey gives me a bitter side glance.

I sigh. “What I mean to say is… you’ve been through some rough shit–more than Ray and I went through, anyway. We’re just trying to make you comfortable.”

“Avoiding me is not exactly a way to make me feel comfortable,” he says as he starts to touch the small golden strands of hair coming out from under the black beanie he’s wearing. D gave it to him as a way to sort of hide the buzzed, scarred part of his head for the time being.

I put my hands in my jean pockets as I shrug. “Okay. So I won’t avoid you…”

It’s quiet for a few seconds between us. I can feel the tension of all the things I’m keeping from Mikey–all the information that’s just threatening to burst out of my mouth and now I’m thinking about what Ray said–how if I tell him all this stuff, it’ll probably kill him.

He takes in a deep breath. “So…”

“So…” I say back. I crack a smile. the tension’s killing me. “You wanna go for a walk?”

Mikey nods, assessing that invitation. “Yeah, I think I do…”

 

 

As we’re walking, I notice he _is_ doing a little better, walking normally–if just slowly–and the color is going back into his face a bit. Even though he’s a year older than me, he’s always felt like a little brother to me. Like someone I’m meant to watch over. And with that promise I made to Gerard all those years ago, well, I really do have an obligation to protect Mikey now that he’s gone. 

I’m just so sorry that I couldn’t do enough before it got to be this way. I couldn’t stop BL/ind from taking Mikey and breaking him. I was the only one around who could have stopped them. And I failed.

“God, it’s fucking bright out here,” Mikey remarks while he shields his eyes with a palm.

I look down at the aviator sunglasses that are tucked snugly in my shirt. “Here, take these.” I pull them out and hand them over to Mikey. 

“Thanks,” he tells me as he puts them on, looking like the little hipster he used to be with that beanie on.

“Anytime, bud,” I reply with a smile as we keep walking.

“You know what’s weird?” Mikey tells me out of the blue.

“What?” I respond.

“I woke up this morning with the Chip and Dale Rescue Rangers theme song in my head,” he giggles out.

I laugh. “That’s random…”

“Yeah, like I can’t even remember the last time I watched–well, I mean obviously since I was a kid, but it just came back to me–Ch-ch-ch-chip and Dale!” he starts singing.

I start laughing again. Mikey’s such a kid. But I do remember the theme song now. “Rescue Rangers!” I sing back.

“I can’t really remember the rest of the words,” he says with a laugh. “Just that one part–what would you call that, a chorus or a refrain?”

“I dunno, it’s only like two lines!” I answer with a laugh, trying to remember the rest of the song. “Or is that the whole song?” 

Mikey laughs. “Yeah, I don’t even know how that got into my head–I didn’t even really like that show.”

“Yeah, me neither,” I answer with a shake of my head. “You know what cartoon I really liked back in the day, though? Those old Ghostbusters’ cartoons…”

“Oh yeah!” Mikey replies with animated eyebrows.

“Some of the episodes used to scare me,” I remark, thinking about some of those creepy, corny episodes.

“Oh, dude, I remember like, hiding behind a blanket next to Gerard on the couch, wondering if I should keep my eyes open–like that one episode with the boogie man–I had fucking nightmares for a week!” Mikey was smiling really big now, which made me smile. 

Until I noticed the lack of Gerard joining in on the geeky conversation–he always had different versions of his and Mikey’s childhood adventures that he would cut in with. It just felt like we had a script to run through and one of the actors went missing. I can see it on Mikey’s dropping face now, too, he’s thinking the same thing. 

“Anyway…” I start, “Pretty random for a cartoon song to pop into your head–especially an old one like Rescue Rangers.”

“Yeah…” Mikey continues with a nod. “Hopefully that means that I’ll get the rest of my memories back.”

I look at him carefully. He looks optimistic, but I also see that sadness in his brown and green eyes. He looks back at me and makes a crooked smile from one side of his mouth.

“I don’t want you to tell me what happened that night in Battery City,” he tells me.

I can’t contain the surprise and my eyebrows rise up on their own. “Wh-why?” 

“I think it’ll come back to me, just given enough time. That happens to people with amnesia, right?” He looks at me for reassurance. 

I nod, not actually sure if that’s true at all…

“And anyway,” he continues, “I know you and Ray aren’t telling me about that night for a specific reason. You think it’ll hurt me, right?”

I look down and nod.

“Well, then, I trust you guys,” is all he replies with as he reaches his right hand over and squeezes my left shoulder.

“Ow,” I mutter. That area above my collar bone was bandaged but it still hurt when he squeezed it. 

“Oh–sorry,” Mikey says as he quickly retreats his arm.

I let out a giggle. “It’s okay. And thank you. You’ve been a real trooper throughout this whole thing…”

“A trooper?” Mikey says with a narrowed eye. “I’m not a kid, Frank–stop talking like such an old man!” he jokes.

We go on like this for another half hour or so, staying clear of all topics related to Gerard or Battery City. It got hot again, even though it’s significantly less hot than it’s been in the last week. Anyway, because of the heat, Mikey started to feel worn out and so we walked back to D’s for him to get more rest.

 

 

Pretty soon after that was dinner time and Ray wasn’t talking to me at all.

“What’d you, Pony and Hot Chimp do today, Grace?” D was asking the little curly-head.

She smiles. “We played hide-and-seek up in the hills. I won 5 times.”

“Yeah, can’t imagine it’d ever be hard to find this one,” D scoffs while pointing a finger at Show Pony.

“Why do you always have to pick on me? You jealous just 'cause you can’t get your fatass to hide behind anything?” Show Pony shoots back with a smirk.

“Keep smiling, punk… You haven’t played hide-and-seek with me yet.” D turns back to Grace. “Good job, kiddo!” He reaches over a palm and Grace slaps him a high five.

“And what’d you three do today?” Hot Chimp asks us from her seat, her arms crossed. She didn’t talk much, but when she did, she deliberately said things to get a specific response. This time, I supposed she wanted to break the tension between us. Ugh.

“Mikey and I went for a walk. He’s feeling a lot better–aren’t you, Mikey?” I say with a smile, looking toward him.

“Yeah, I’m feeling better,” he says with a polite smile toward Hot Chimp.

“What did you do, Ray?” Hot Chimp asks in her monotone, low voice.

Ray hasn’t talked to anyone since he came back from wherever he wandered to. He looks up, but doesn’t put on a front. He looks either sad or pissed, the way his eyes are low and no hint of a smile appears on his mouth. 

“I went for a walk, too,” is all he says.

“Hope that was lovely,” Hot Chimp mutters as she takes a drink of water from her plastic white cup.

It’s uncomfortably quiet for the next few seconds.

Then Ray talks again. “You know, it actually wasn’t. Because the whole time I had to think about what this dickhead told me earlier.” He shot a bitter glare at me as he said that.

“Could you please watch your language around the kid?” D directs at Ray with a bitter stare.

“Sorry,” Ray says as he glances down toward the table.

“I think we should go get you ready for bed,” Show Pony whispers to Grace as he gets out of his seat from the table.

“But I’m not tired…” she protests, keeping her eyes between me and Ray.

“It’s okay, we’ll play some more games tonight, so–”

“Pony, I’m ten. I’m not a five year old with an 8 o'clock curfew. I’m old enough for the grown up conversations,” Grace protests with a steadying look up at Show Pony.

Show Pony sighs as he looks down at Grace, giving up on getting her out of here.

I feel just fucking embarrassed right now, for Ray to air all our fucking dirty laundry in front of everyone, especially Grace.

“Not for this conversation, Grace,” I say as I stand up. I look down at Ray. “Let’s go talk.”

I move away from the table, waiting for Ray to follow me. It’s about time we square this out. He stands up from the table, and I can see Mikey debating on whether he should follow, too. But he stays in his seat, just looking back toward us, along with the rest of the crew.

I walk out to the front, where it’s all dark except for one small lamp hanging from the makeshift wooden door of D’s headquarters.

“How dare you fucking start shit in front of Grace,"I start.

"Oh, come on–she’s a big girl, and it’s pretty clear to everyone what’s going on between us,” Ray tells me as he folds his arms across his chest.

I crease my eyebrows. “Still…that wasn’t cool.”

“You know, what you said to me back in Dr. D’s office wasn’t very cool, either,” Ray replies.

I nod. “Yeah, you’re right, and I’m sorry. Can we just get over this now?”

“No,” Ray says with narrowed eyes. “Frank, we never fight like this! Never. And now, all because of what happened back in Battery City, it seems like we’ve been doing nothing but fighting!”

“I said sorry! What more do you want? It’s not exactly like all this is one sided,” I protest, feeling a pain above my collar bone because I’m making too many motions with my hands and arms.

“I know… I’m pressing your buttons, too, but… Dude, you need to learn to just stop. Can’t you see how this is affecting you? Sometimes you have to accept that there are some things you can’t change, no matter how much you want them to, no matter how much effort you put into it–”

“Can _**you**_ just stop? The more you talk about this like it’s not a big deal, the more I want to fucking shoot you,” I say, taking in a deep breath to keep myself calm.

“It _ **is**_ a big deal to me, Frank…”

I shake my head. “You say you care, but it really just sounds like more than anything else, you just want to get over it and move on. If it was as big a deal for you as it is for me, then you wouldn’t accept it. Gerard’s not dead yet. And any longer we wait to go rescue him–” 

“Why can’t you ever let things go?” Ray bursts out.

I feel my chest tighten. Let go? Let go of what? Gerard’s not dead!

“Gerard wouldn’t want you to beat yourself up over this…” Ray continues.

“I don’t care what Gerard wants!” I yell out like an idiot. It was the first thing to come to mind to say. “And it’s my fault that this all happened anyway, so I deserve to beat myself up over this!” 

Ray narrows an eye. “How is this your fault?” 

“I watched them… I watched as they took his body away, I watched as Mikey got taken away, and I just let them…” I can feel hot tears forming in my eyes now. “I could have stopped it all. At the very least, Mikey wouldn’t have stupid amnesia if I’d just run and taken him out of there when I had the chance!”

“Frank, that’s not your fault… None of it is. You were doing what you had to so Mikey and I could survive. We’re alive because of you. If you and I had traded places, would you have blamed all the bad stuff on me?” Ray asks.

I blink as I look downward. “I don’t know…”

Ray smiles. “You wouldn’t. Just like I don’t blame you, and neither does Mikey or anyone else. So don’t beat yourself up about it.”

He puts a hand on my right shoulder to comfort me.

“I’m still gonna go after Gerard, ” I tell him.

His smile turns into a frown. “Can you just let it go?”

“No, Ray! I can’t! He’s my best friend in the whole wide world. And I can’t abandon him like that,” I explain. 

“So you’re gonna go get killed and leave Mikey and me alone?”

I roll my eyes. “I’m not gonna get killed.” 

“Then tell me how you plan on infiltrating Battery City by yourself, fighting against hundreds, maybe thousands of SCARECROW and BL/ind agents,” Ray tells me with a hard look.

“Well, maybe if I had some help, it wouldn’t be as hard…” I mutter with a raised eyebrow.

“I’m not going with you,” Ray tells me. Ouch. No waver in his tone. Pure ice cold.

“Well, good. I don’t need you,” I answer.

“You’re not going to get help from the others, either. They’re all too busy taking care of Grace and Mikey. And if she loses another one of us, it’ll crush her!”

“Don’t you fucking use Grace as a tool to enhance your argument,” I spit at him. “I’m going, whether you want me to or not.”

“What about Mikey? You think he can handle losing you after losing Gerard?” Ray says as he moves closer to me.

I sigh. Mikey is my responsibility, provided that Gerard’s not here to take care of him…but the point is, I’ll be gone to bring his brother back.

“You take care of Mikey when I’m gone, then,” is all I tell Ray. I brush past him to go back inside.

I’m done arguing.


	3. Chapter 3

I can’t fucking sleep.

It’s 3am. Or something like that, last time I checked.

In order to keep from causing further friction, I decided to sleep out on the couch while Ray, Mikey, and Pony slept in one bedroom. Dr. D, Grace and Hot Chimp slept in the other bedroom.

I’m lying on the lumpy old couch, just hearing the “tick, tick, tick” of the clock in the room, and it’s killing me.

I can’t wait any longer. I have to get out of here.

I get up and gather all my things—which isn’t much, since everything we had on us when we busted into SCARECROW was all we came out of Battery City with. I grab a few food supplies–protein bars, dried fruits, and a canteen of water–and head on outside as quietly as I can.

Now to just get my hands on one of the bikes…

Dr. D has all the bikes and his van kept in a small garage built separately from the headquarters. It’s over here in this small shack just several yards behind the base.

I try and make my footsteps light as I hear them pad on the dirt, accompanied by the sound of crickets in this night air. Once I get to the garage, I see that D has locked the chain-link fence, preventing me from just going in. But the fence isn’t that high…

I jump and hop onto the fence, lowering myself over with little difficulty. I can sort of make out the different vehicles in here, with my eyes adjusting to the darkness. I go and pick up the first motorcycle I see, just resting along the side of the—

“Hey!”

A small, but bright light flashes and blinds me.

It sounds like D discovered me. Shit.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?!” he barks out.

I back away from the bike and hold out my hands. “Look, D… I know you’re gonna try and stop me from leaving, but I don’t care! I—”

“Shut up!”

I look down in shame.

“I’m not gonna stop you from doin’ nothing. Now go on and finish getting that bike out. I’ll open up the lock for you,” he tells me in a calm voice.

WHAT?! He’s okay with this?

“Why are you helping me?” I ask him as I bring the bike up to the locked chain-link fence.

D shines his flashlight right into my face as he answers, “Because I know you’re going to go through with this whether you get there on a bike or a fucking llama.”

He lowers his flashlight as he finally unlocks the fence so I can get the bike out.

“Don’t forget the helmet,” he tells me as he points toward a helmet hanging up on the wall. I take the helmet and roll out the bike, and once that’s done, I just stand here, not really sure what I should say.

“…Thanks,” is what I come up with.

“Don’t thank me,” D tells me. “I think this is kind of a stupid idea, too… but if I had the use of my legs, I’d probably be joining you.”

I smile at that. D always has my back.

After he locks up the fence again, he hands me a small, black backpack.

“What’s in here?” I ask as I unzip it. Inside I can feel something hard, and metal-y.

“It’s a transmitter and a receiver. So in case you fuck up or manage to find Gerard, you can get back to me with this. Radius is 50 miles, so I don’t expect you to get back to me too often, but I hope it helps you if you’re in a pinch,” D explains to me.

I nod my head and rezip the backpack.

“Son, do you know what you’re doing?” D asks me. It’s dark, but I can see the concern on his face.

I nod my head, tilting it to the side. “Going full speed to Battery City. Not stopping until I come back with Gerard. And I’m going to find him. Even if he’s…” I trail off, not finishing my sentence.

“This is a big risk you’re taking, you know that?” D asks.

“I know, but it’s more than worth it if I can bring him back,” I reply.

D sighs. “Be careful out there, Frank. I don’t want to have to put up any more headstones any time soon.”

“I will be,” I reply with a gulp. “Take care of Ray and Mikey for me. I know they’ll be pissed, and they won’t understand, but…if I’m not back in two weeks…please take care of them. Mikey, especially.”

“Is there anything you want me to tell ‘em?” D asks.

I think for a moment. “No. There’s nothing I can say that hasn’t already been said.”

D nods and comes forward to me. I lean down and give him a great big hug.

“Roll the bike out a quarter of a mile. No one should be able to hear you that far out. You got a map?”

“Yep,” I answer. “And this bike…how much gas has it got?”

“It’s as full as can be, just waiting to go. You _do_ remember how to ride the thing, don’t you?”

“I’ll be fine,” I say with a wave of my hand.

“Then go forth and bring pain and misery upon those who did us wrong, my son,” D tells me with a salute from his temple.

“Will do, sir,” I reply.

Those are my last words to him before I roll the motorcycle out to the road. I can’t even see the headquarters from the road at this time of night/morning.

I know I told D two weeks, but I plan on getting this shit done in a day or two, if it’s an overnight thing. Any longer than that, and well…that won’t be too promising. Which is why I plan on getting this shit done right away!

Once I feel I’m far enough away, I sling the backpack onto my back properly, tighten the straps, and put the helmet on. Then I mount the bike and turn on the ignition.

It had been a while since I rode a motorcycle, so it was a little hard to get my balance perfect at first. But after a minute or two, everything was fine. Now just straight on to Battery City.

  
  


I rode on for two hours until I took a break and stopped on the side of the road. My ass hurt, my face was sweating, and my arms were tired. My shoulder was a little strained, too. So I stood up, took off the helmet, and stretched and shook out the tension in my muscles.

The sun is barely about to come up. I’m still about 50 miles away from Battery City, with ¾ of the tank still full. Hopefully this means that I can get in and out of there with Gerard without having to stop for gas at all.

I take in a deep breath.

I guess I should actually start planning this…

Okay, so they took him somewhere that wasn’t the furnace room, and maybe not the hospital because they needed Mikey to be “repaired” there… but what would they do to Gerard and where would they take him? Maybe the morgue was the right idea…should I look there just to make sure he’s not actually dead?

My heart sinks.

I wish I could remember everything that happened and everything I heard that night. I knew I shouldn’t have waited this long to come back…

I put my helmet on and get back on the red and black Ducati, but don’t start it yet. I wonder if I’m really doing the right thing…in a few hours, Ray and the rest of them are gonna wake up, find me gone, and he’s gonna be pissed. Maybe Mikey will be, too…

Fuck, I can’t think about any of that! I just need to forget all this for now and just focus on getting to Gerard.

I rev up the bike’s engine again and take off on the road again. By the time the sun comes up, I notice that I’ve already crossed over into Zone 1. Getting closer. It’s quiet out on these roads. No one’s really here, but that’s only because the day has barely started…

One of the ways we used to get into Battery City was through an old border entrance on the Northeast perimeter that had been shut down for over a year. There was still a huge wall there, but no one was actively guarding it. That’s where I’m headed.

Once I get in view of those tall city walls and I see the sun rising behind them, I take in a gulp.

This is it.

I start crossing over into the dirt to get to the road that surrounds the city, in order to avoid the patrol at the main gate, where Route Guano starts—or ends, depending on your perspective. The terrain’s bumpier and I can feel the helmet on my head bobbing up and down against my jaw. Hope the tires on this baby can take it.

I drive on toward the old Northeastern gate, keeping my eyes and ears open for anything. Well, safely enough I get to the entrance of the large metal gate. I stop the bike and hop off, leaving the sweltering helmet to rest on it.

God, that’s a fucking bright sun… I fish around for my sunglasses in my shirt, and they’re not there. I pat around my pockets and—fuck, I let Mikey borrow them yesterday. He put them away on top of a cabinet in his room and I never got them back from him. Ugh… well, at least the sun’s not directly in my eyes right now.

I start walking toward this semi-underground entrance that we usually use to get to the other side to open up the gate. It’s kind of like a little rabbit hole to go through. I wedge this rectangular piece of iron, no taller than 4 ft, open with my hands and hurl it to the side—WOMP!

Fuck, that was loud–better try and be more quiet…

I crouch through the little doorway I made and step through the small dark tunnel that inclines downward a bit, before it starts inclining upward. It’s dark, but at the end of this tunnel are vents that reach to the surface of Battery City. I peek up through the little lines of the vents, trying to see if anyone’s out there. It doesn’t help much, but I don’t hear anything, so I fit my fingers through the vent and pry the lid off, pushing it to the side before I hoist myself up.

Over here, the city’s gray, towered by skyscrapers, the huge wall, and the pollution that can’t seem to escape this little bubble of radiation. I get myself upright onto the sidewalk, and see the control to the door. I quickly run up to it—but wait a sec, do I really need the bike in here? It would make more noise than anything, but if I leave it out there, then—fuck, I should have just left it in that tunnel thing and—

“Identify yourself!” I heard someone yell at me. I whip around and see an agent in that stupid BL/ind mask. He has two more agents with him and they all have their white rifles at the ready.

FUCK.

“Oh, I was just admiring the handiwork,” I respond with a smile.

“Identify yourself!” the agent demands aggressively.

“Fun Ghoul,” I tell him with a straight face.

“Fu-Fun Ghoul?” the agent questions. “What is your name?”

“Idiot—that’s the Fabulous Killjoy!” one of his friends tells him.

“Fabulous Killjoy?! You are to come with us immediately!” the first agent says as he looks back over at me.

“Yeah…how about I get back to you on that?” I say once I start inching backward, pressing the combination behind me.

The door starts to open and grate and the agents start shooting. I duck to the ground to dodge, and as soon as the door opens up a wide enough space, I crawl out and scramble over the concrete to hop onto the bike and get the fuck out of there.

“Backup! I repeat, we need backup! We have a situation!” one of the agents speaks into his little radio speaker.

I get going right away. While I drive with one hand, I use the other to slip on the helmet.Pretty immediately, the help that the agent asked for shows up at the main gate and starts heading toward me—shiiiiit. There’s about a ten of them on bikes and two in cars. I veer off into the dirt again to get a bit of a head-start towards Route Guano…fuck, I didn’t plan on this happening.

I drive as fast as I can over the desert, nearly crashing over random weeds and rocks. I can see the other bikes and cars getting closer and closer as they drive on the main road. I continue to drive through the desert. If they follow me out here, I’ll still be ahead of them. But it’ll also be harder for me to fight back…

“You are under arrest! Stop!” I heard a loud announcement from one of the cars. The agent in the passenger seat was speaking through a white megaphone sticking out of the window.

I take my right hand off of the handle bar to reach for my ray gun. I pull it out and kiss the barrel for luck. I’m gonna need it.

I start driving towards the road because the rocky hills are coming up soon, and I won’t be able to drive in the dirt for much longer.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1…

As I skid onto the black road, the cars and bikes are only about a hundred yards behind me. I rev the engine again, thrusting it to the red line. But as fast as I’m going, these guys are keeping up…damn it, this is an old bike, so it probably can’t even go as fast as these other cars can go…

I turn around and aim my gun toward the bikes.

_Relax my breathing and wait just for the opportune moment_ , just like Gerard showed me how…

*POP*

*POP*

*POP*

*POP*

Four of the bikes skidded as their front tires blew out and two of them spun onto two of their other comrades, spinning them out and onto the gravel. Six down.

“Haha!” I laugh out loud. That’s probably the coolest thing I’ve ever done in a road battle and no one’s even here to see it…

But the cars are still after me and now they’re shooting. I turn around and shoot at the tires of the nearest car, but I keep missing.

I have to focus on outspeeding them to get out of their range…

I look at the speedometer and I’m going as fast as I fucking can—so why the fuck are they still gaining?!

Before I know it, one of the cars catches up to me and bumps the back wheel of my bike.

“Fuck!” I cry out as I turn around, and I see it coming again. I grip the handle bars as tight as I can while holding my ray gun in my right hand—and then I feel myself and the bike get thrown into the air.

“Unhh!” My bike luckily lands back on its wheels, but I lose my balance and the bike starts to slide over to the side and on the dirt.

“Oh shit oh shit oh shit oh–”

It was a moment that slowed down just enough for me to see what was going on, yet it was too fast for me to do anything about it but watch as I saw the ground get farther and twist away from me until suddenly–

*SNAP*

“Gaaahhhhhhh!” I could hear myself screaming. I heard myself. As if I wasn’t even in my own body.

I know I had hit the ground, but somehow I hadn’t seen or felt it. Except for the snap in my leg, that is. The world is white. All I can feel is my heart pounding like it wants to rip out of my chest. All I know is an intense pain in my lower left leg. And it’s just hot. I can’t breathe.

I close my eyes and try to concentrate. I feel dizzy—and like I might throw up. Slowly, the feeling comes back in little sprinkling stings along my nerves in every limb. But I still feel the pain in my leg.

“God…” I groan out as I try and blink it out of consciousness.

I can finally see in splotches again and I just see cracked glass in front of my eyes. I become self aware that I have hands again and pull off my helmet to throw it to the ground. It’s now that I realize that I had been thrown from the bike–pretty fuckin’ far. Because I can see my bike—well, pieces of it—near the road and I’m about 20 feet away from it in the dirt. I don’t know where the fuck my gun flew to…

I look back down toward the rest of my body, and I see that one leg is sprawled out straight and the other is bent. It’s the bent one that bothers me, because that’s the one hurting. Fuck.

I take in a gulp before I try to move it and–OH GOD!

Oh my fucking god, no!

I moved it maybe an inch before intense pain came into it again, making me feel lightheaded all over again.

I hear myself breathe in short, shallow breaths. Fuck…I know this pain. I’m 100% sure I’ve broken a bone.

I look around me, finally remembering that I was being chased and just across the dry desert shrubbery is an army of two BL/ind cars and four bikes coming toward me.

I twist around to get onto my elbows, and somehow push myself along the dirt to get out of the way–because that’s obviously going to beat cars that can reach me and run me over in ten seconds, right?

To my surprise, the engines stop and the agents exit their cars. At this point, I’ve gotten close enough to my trashed bike that I can see bits of it in the dirt now and I finally found my gun just near the wreckage. I crawl a bit farther and just a few feet in front of me is one of the side-view mirrors, clipped clean right off, the mirror cracked into five jagged sections. In the reflection of the broken side-view mirror, I can see my neck–the part that had been grazed just on the “Jinx Removing” tattoo. _God, the irony…_

“You are under arrest, fugitive Killjoy,” one of the agents says in a robotic voice.

I breathlessly chuckle as I see the rest come walking toward me. Great, wonder what I’m in for—

*BOOM*

An orange cloud bursts behind me, making the agents disappear from my vision. The fuck was that?!

*BOOM*

Another explosion goes off and everything is shrouded in the smoke of the two small bursts. I stay put on the ground, luckily just out of the way. Before I can crawl an inch farther, a large vehicle comes crashing through the smoke to push the burning BL/ind squad cars out of the way. A few agents are tumbled over on the ground, shooting at the vehicle.

Now that I have a good look at it, it looks like a truck pulling along a camper, but it’s reinforced with a ton of rusted steel, looking more like a tank than a truck.

Someone with a green helmet on their head jumps out of the truck and shoots down each of the remaining agents. After that’s done, they turn over to me and start walking over. I look up, not sure what to do.

“Are you alright?” they ask as they lift up the visor on their helmet. It sounds like a woman’s voice, and now that I look at their navy blue jumpsuit with the two lumps protruding out of the chest area, I can tell it’s a woman.

“I…” I gasp out. I guess I hadn’t gotten over the shock enough to remember how to make words come out of my mouth.

Without another word, the woman bends down and hoists me across her shoulder, and then she leans down and grabs me from one of my legs and carries me across her back like a freaking firefighter. I don’t know how she did it, because she was so skinny, but she was able to lift me. She carries me over to the camper part of the vehicle and dumps me inside. She runs back outside and in a few seconds, I feel the engine start and we’re going.

I close my eyes. I can’t even deal with trying to look at anything around me. I don’t care about what’s going on outside or what those sounds are. All I know is I broke my fucking leg, I trashed my bike, and now I feel even farther away from rescuing Gerard than I did when I was at Dr. D’s hideout. All the wounds on my body hurt all over again, and I’m just so mad at myself for letting myself get hurt even worse.

I don’t know how long it took us to get wherever the lady stopped driving, but she wasted no time in rushing out to get me. The bright sun played against her back and cast her front in shadow, but now that she had her helmet off I could see that she had a lot of wrinkles on her face and gray hair tied up in a loose bun, strands straying across her forehead in the wind.

“Can you stand at all?” she asks me as she pulls me up by my shoulders, which still hurt by the way.

I can’t really respond, and I don’t really want to, so I just kind of let out an “uh…” before she grasps me and carries me outside with her anyway. She drags me across the dirt, forcing me to step on my broken leg, which feels like I have a hammer jabbing into the broken part of it during each step I take. I feel sick and sweaty again.

The lady gets me inside a sort of house. It looks more like a shack on the outside, but on the inside, she has a bunch of drapes, some light-colored wooden furniture, wine-colored tarps all over the floor, and even a few plants and pottery, making it very home-like. She lays me onto what looks like a small, padded mattress, the size of a hospital cot.

“Urghhh,” I quietly try to keep myself from moaning. I feel bad enough having had this lady rescue me, I don’t need to make myself look even more pitiable.

I hear her wheezing as she takes the time to wipe the sweat off her brow. After a couple seconds, though, she goes over to unlace my boots and takes them off. She didn’t waste any time or use care, either.

“Gah!” I yelled out as the pull on my leg made the broken part hurt again. I couldn’t control the volume of my voice this time.

She ignores this and takes off the other boot. Then she urges me to take off my backpack—which luckily I still have on—my vest, and my shirt with a silent upward gesture of her arms. She helps me sit up a bit so I can do all this, and once I’m shirtless, I notice her look at all my tattoos just before she stares down at my legs.

“Where does it hurt?” she asks.

I try to get up to point again, but on reflex use my legs to help me up, which hurts my leg again. “Ah–it’s right–”

“I got it,” she interrupts with a stoic face. “Now we have to take off your pants.”

"What?” I blurt out.

“You heard me. Now help me take off your pants.”

Before I can say anything else in protest, she darts over to my hips and starts to unbutton my jeans.

“Hey! I can do that myself,” I say as I rush my hands to my zipper and push hers out of the way. She gives me an annoyed stare and waits as I unzip my jeans and get them down a bit, so she can just pull them off of me.

This is really fucking awkward. Even though she is an old lady. But that just makes it a bit creepier. Regardless of age, I don’t just let any woman take off my pants. That was a privilege designated only for—

“Gahh!” I look ahead of me and see that the old hag is squeezing my leg.

“It hurts here, yes?” she asks as she squeezes again.

“Ugh….yes—just stop it already!” I shout.

“I have to know where it’s broken so I can heal it,” she bites back at me as she feels around the rest of my leg. The part where it was broken is already pretty swollen.

“Look, I appreciate you rescuing me and all…but forget about the leg! You have to take me back to Battery City. Please,” I plead to her.

“No.”

“But you were able to take everyone out easy back there! You could get me back in!”

“I said no! It’s too dangerous for you,” she returns while looking down out of her dark, almond-shaped eyes.

"I don’t care—I have to go back!” My heart is racing. I can see the future fading. Everything is lost. “Please—I can’t leave without getting someone out of there—he needs me! I made a promise to get him out of there!” My voice is all husky and choked and I can feel tears streaking out of my eyes.

“Lie down and rest first. Then you can go back,” she tells me with just a smidgeon less sternness.

"Who are you to make that decision for me?!” I argue.

“I’m the one who saved your life! If it weren’t for me, you would be dead. Now, do us both a favor, and shut up and just let me heal you!” she snaps.

I exhale so much air in release of all the stress I feel in my chest. I put my hands up to my face, to cry into those instead, as if that’ll make me disappear. I want to be invisible. I want to just be gone.

“This wasn’t supposed to happen…” I say, more to myself than the old lady. “Why did I let it happen? I fucked everything up again…”

“Your friend will still be in Battery City by the time you heal. He would probably want you to take care of yourself before going off after him, too.” I still have my hands over my eyes, so I can’t see her, but the lady really sounds like she’s trying to make me feel better, even though she knows nothing about the situation. Now I feel like such a fucking baby to be laying here sobbing in front of this person who just rescued me.

I’m still swallowing my tears and breathing in and out through my mouth when the lady speaks again.

“You like Japan?” she asks me.

I take my hands from my face and gulp, “What?”

“Your jacket.” She has my vest in her hands, and is pointing at the red rising sun on the back. “You like Japan?”

I swallow some more tears. “Uh, yeah…”

She nods. “The Land of the Rising Sun, this is why you have this symbol here?”

I nod my head, even though I’m lying on the side of it. The lady gives what I think might be a smirk—unless it’s just her old tight skin that makes it look like that.

“What do you know about the Land of the Rising Sun?”

What kind of question is that? Well…maybe that’s not such a weird question…

“I’ve been there a few times. I like the culture,” is what I tell her.

She nods. “I see. That’s why you have the symbol on your arm, too? It must be very important to you.”

“Yeah, I guess, so…” I reply, the moisture mostly gone from my face now.

In any other situation, this smalltalk would have irritated me. But there was something in her eyes, when she spoke about Japan and looked at my vest, that made me think that this wasn’t just smalltalk.

The lady turns her eyes back to me, giving me a steady look that makes her look a lot younger than she really is. “It was not my intention to upset you. But please get one thing in perspective: I rescued you. You went out there on your own, and you were seconds away from death. What makes you think that with a broken leg, you’d be able to do any better than the poor job you did with both legs—even if you had me, an old woman, to help you? Wait until your leg heals before you go back to the city. Only then will you be able to make a difference.”

I was staring down at my chest as she said all this.

“Do you understand?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I mutter out of the side of my mouth.

“Good.”

“Hey…” I weakly call out as she starts to examine my leg. “My…my backpack. There—there’s a radio transmitter in there. We can use it to contact someone.”

“In here?” she asks as she bends down to pick up the fallen bag from the ground.

“Yeah,” I answer.

She opens the bag and hesitates before she pulls out the transmitter—which is partially crushed and has wires spilling out of it like it got gutted.

"Oh, Jesus Christ…” I begin to mutter. Another thing broken and ruined.

“Maybe you can fix it?” she suggests.

I make a wheezy laugh. “I wouldn’t know how to fix that even if I had tools.” That was Ray’s area of expertise.

“I’m sorry about that,” she tells me, genuinely looking sorry.

“It’s okay. Everything’s ruined, but it’s okay,” I respond to her. She places it back in the bag and sets it aside before she returns to my leg.

“Can I ask you what your name is?” I say as I look up toward her.

She turns to face me and gives me a gentler look. “My name is Masaki. Masaki Ninomiya. And you, what is your name?”

“Frank. Frank Iero.” She nods in response.

“Thank you,” I tell her as I look into her eyes.

She looks back into mine, nodding again, “You’re welcome.”


	4. Chapter 4

It’s been three days since Masaki saved me and has been nursing me. And considering we’re not exactly anywhere near a hospital, the treatment’s been pretty primitive. My leg is pinned between two wooden splints and propped up with a large rag tied around it, connected to a chain, connected to one of the low-hanging beams of Masaki’s house. (she referred to it as her house once, so I’ll call it a house)

Oh yeah, she also doesn’t have any pain medication here, and ice kind of doesn’t exist out in the Zones, so I’ve been feeling every second of this broken leg and it’s been making me feel like I’m on PCP from the pain alone. Fun stuff, really. But thank God for tea. Masaki and Dr. D must get their tea from the same stash, because she has a bunch of it, too. It’s what I’ve been consuming for the most part these past few days, besides what little vegetables she grows in a small garden just outside the shack. Tea, tea, tea, tea, tea. I’m kind of sick of it to be honest.

The old lady and I haven’t really spoken that much in our time here. She leaves sometimes, probably out to get supplies wherever she gets them, because every time she comes back she always has a bag of something. But every other minute she’s home, she’s either busy nursing me, meditating, or reading. It kind of makes you wonder how other people are living around here, other killjoys, that is. Although, I’m not so sure she is a killjoy. Sure, she has explosives and a ray gun, but she lives almost what I’d call a normal life here.

“I’m going to do laundry, now. You mind giving me your underwear?” Masaki asks out of nowhere with the straightest face.

“What?!” I give her a wild grimace. I had already been pants-less the past three days, and I was probably going to be pants-less until my leg healed enough for me to get out of these splints.

“Don’t be gross–it’s about time you changed out of those!” she sternly argues.

I scoff, “Lady, these are the only underpants I own at the moment, so–”

“All the more reason to get them washed!”

I make a small laugh. “Uh, I’m not taking these off. I don’t even know how you propose doing that when my leg is propped up here…”

She looks toward my legs as if it was the first time she’d seen them all day. “Oh!” She rushes over and quickly unties the rag, almost letting my leg drop–which would have been extremely painful.

“Fine, we’ll only take you out of this just for an hour…” she says as she starts to unwrap the bandages that held my splints together. “It’s looking a little better…”

For a moment, I forgot how grumpy I was. It’s getting better! That means I can be healed soon! And I can get Gerard–

“Now off with them,” Masaki says with her hands on her hips as she looks down at me.

I glare at her. “No.”

“Am I going to have to take them off myself then?” she asks while raising a wrinkled brow.

You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me…

“…Fine,” I finally reply.

She just stands there with her hands on her hips.

I crease my eyebrows. “Do you mind???”

She rolls her eyes. “Oh honey, it’s not like I haven’t seen one of those before,” she gestures to my crotch with her chin. “I was an army nurse for 40 years.”

So she was a nurse… that explains a lot.

“Still…” I reply to her. “I feel really uncomfortable with an old lady watching me get naked.”

Masaki giggles. “My, you’re such a prude! I figured with all those tattoos, you weren’t one to be so shy about your body.”

I roll my eyes. “Can you just turn around, granny?!” I almost growl out in annoyance. Although, I can’t help but feel a bit intrigued at the way she’s speaking. Like she’s about 50 years younger on the inside.

Masaki turns around and even puts her hands up over her eyes to humor me. I sheepishly pull down my boxers to my knees and cover my lower region with my hands. “I…kind of need you to help me get them off…” I say, feeling my face burn out of embarrassment.

Masaki makes a small laugh. “Ok, let me get you a sheet to cover yourself first.” She drapes a white sheet over me and then reaches just down towards my lower legs to get the boxers off all the way. “Well, that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

“Speak for yourself…” I mutter under my breath.

  
  


The next few days passed along just like this. Just lying here, drinking tea, waiting for my body to heal while I learned small things about Masaki everyday. She learned a little about me, too. Like what some of my tattoos meant. She was actually fascinated by how many I had and particularly liked the one of my grandpa Frank.

“You know, I can really see him in you,” she says. “Of course, I haven’t seen you smile much since you’ve been here, but this expression on your grandpa, that vitality, I see it when I look at you and your eyes.”

I let a smile grow on my face. “Wow…that…that’s one of the nicest things you can ever say to me.”

“It’s just what I see. I’m sure those who know you can see it, too,” she tells me with a smile. I smile back at her.

“Oh, let me show you an old picture–you’ll get a kick out of it,” she says with a giggle as she quickly stands up.

She walks over to her room and comes back with a small mahogany-framed black and white picture of a young Asian couple. The girl has a sort of pompadour ponytail going on, with dark dramatic lipstick on, a miniskirt, with a white t-shirt and small leather jacket on, with her sleeves pulled up to the elbow. The guy is dressed in a gray shark suit, with these ray bans on and a cigarette stuck in his right hand while he has his other arm around the girl. They are standing in front of what looks like a waterfall.

“Is this you?” I ask as I smile at it.

“Yeah, me and my husband Henry. We weren’t married yet, that happened six months later. But this is when he took me to Niagara Falls. I had been wanting to go there since I was ten, and one day, he made it happen. It’s my favorite picture of us, because in that moment, we were both freezing, but so stupidly happy it didn’t matter.” Masaki was smiling widely as she reminisced. It made me smile, too.

“He…he died ten years ago,” she tells me, her smile dropping. “I kind of think it was better, though… He didn’t have to live to see what the world came to.” She gently takes back the photo and holds it against her ribs. She looks over at me.

“Don’t feel sad for me. We were married for almost 50 years. Happily, too. Most people don’t ever get to know that kind of joy.”

“I’m sure he must have been a special man, then,” I tell her.

She nods. “He was… He really was…” She looks down and smiles. “You know, the first time I met him, I couldn’t stand him!”

I laugh and reply, “Why?”

“Well, I was a nurse, working at the hospital of an army base in San Francisco during Vietnam, and I had to tend to soldiers who got wounded, then sent back home. One day here comes this guy, he got shot in the hip, and I was setting up his IV, and the first thing he says to me is: ‘Hey beautiful, you ever date a man with a medal of honor before?’ and he gave me the stupidest smile in the world. It wasn’t the first time a soldier had tried to pick me up by using the medal story, so of course, I rejected him.

"But that just made him try harder. He used to call me over to his bed just so he could have an excuse to see me, for the stupidest things. There were so many… but I remember one time I was walking past his bed and he called me, saying that he needed someone to open the blinds on the window behind him, so he could have some light to read.” At that point, Masaki raised an eyebrow in contempt as if she were reliving the moment. “So guess what he does as I lean over to open the window?”

“What?” I ask.

“He had the nerve to grab me around the waist and pull me onto his lap, and he said–oh, what was it? Oh, right, 'just how I thought that would feel,’” Masaki says with an annoyed face.

“What’d you do?” I ask, trying not to laugh.

“I gave him the biggest slap across his face. He had a red mark for two whole days,” she says with a smirk. “After that, he stopped pestering me–completely. It was nice. But the last day before his discharge, he came up to me with the smallest little flowers he found in the hospital courtyard, and he got down on one knee, and told me he was so sorry that it would be the last day he’d ever see me, and that he was sorry he had annoyed me so much.

"You know, it was really kind of pitiful, so I couldn’t just ignore him anymore. So we arranged to go on a date. He took me out to the drive-in to watch some horrible horror movie. I thought it would be the typical date full of ulterior motives, but we ended up just sitting on the hood of his car, laughing hysterically at how bad the movie was, and then we took a drive up to these hills to see the city from up above, and it was all just so much fun. From then on, we couldn’t stay away from each other.” She pauses. “You know, he wasn’t lying about the medal of honor. And I got to find out why he earned it. He saved five of his comrades by entering into the line of fire and taking out enemy soldiers during a nasty firefight. He was the only one who got wounded, but if he hadn’t stepped in, they might have all died. He was lucky to even get out of that alive, from what I was told. He truly was an honorable man, and I got to know more of that side as we stayed together.”

“Wow,” I remark. I loved hearing stories from older people. Their stories always seemed more special and dramatic, and yet more real than anything I’d hear about from my generation. “This guy Henry sounds like someone I’d be friends with.”

Masaki makes a quiet laugh. “Really? You ever do something stupid and annoying to get a girl?”

I laugh. “Not exactly with Henry’s methods…” I say as I think about the tattoo I got of Jamia’s name on my chest only 3 months after we’d been hanging out. “But terrible horror movie dates aren’t anything new for me and my girl.”

Come to think of it, I have done a lot of stupid things just to get Jamia’s attention. And the way I proposed to her was…well…she laughed at me. Who the fuck proposes to a girl and gets laughed at? This guy. But she did say yes…

“So you have a girl?” Masaki asks with raised eyebrows.

“Um, yeah…” I answer.

It was fine enough to reminisce about Jamia, but to think about where she is now is…painful.

Masaki, as if reading my mind, says no more on the subject and walks over to my side. “Let’s see how your leg’s doing today,” she says as she starts to unwrap my leg. She takes it down from the sling and unwraps the splint binding. She squeezes the broken part of my leg, and it hurts a lot still. I grit my teeth at this.

“The bone is still barely forming,” she sighs.

“So what does that mean? I thought the other day you said it looked better,” I return as she starts binding it again.

“Yes, it looked better than it did at first–that is to say that it was no longer swollen, but it was a nearly clean break. it’s going to take a while for the bone to grow back, judging by how little it’s progressed in the week you’ve been here.”

I sigh out of frustration. I hate hearing bad news. Especially about my health. Which is unfortunately something I’ve had to endure many times in my life.

“If only we had access to medication, we could administer some to help you…” Masaki sighs.

“Well, we could always go to Battery City,” I nonchalantly suggest.

She gives me a flat, unamused look. “You know that’s not possible.”

“Well then, how long am I going to have to lie here? I can’t stay like this forever!”

“Calm down. It’s not going to last forever,” Masaki grumpily replies as she connects the sling to the chain again.

“Then how long?”

She sighs through her teeth. “I don’t know… Four to six weeks…maybe longer? Without medication and the proper treatment, it’s going to take longer than it usually would in a hospital.”

I feel my chest heave as I breathe out in frustration. “Great. Gerard’s going to be dead by then.”

“What makes you think he isn’t already dead?” Masaki returns.

If I wasn’t stuck lying in this position I probably would have wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her.

“He can’t be! At least…I don’t think he is…” I answer as I look to the side.

“So what does a few more weeks change?” Masaki asks.

“A few weeks changes a lot! The last four weeks alone brought a lot of changes. There’s no telling what could happen in between that time. And…”

I just remembered, I told D two weeks. If I wasn’t back in two weeks, that he would have to take care of the others. Fuck, he’s going to think I’m dead.

“You look worried,” Masaki tells me.

“Well, thank you for pointing out the obvious! I’m stuck here, for who knows how long, my friend is somewhere in Battery City–in danger–and then everyone else I know is going to think I’m dead because I can’t contact them!”

Masaki is quiet for a while. “If you want, I could take you back to your friends. It’s not Battery City, but it might be more…comfortable for you.”

I don’t say anything in reply at first. I really have to think about this. She really could just take me back to D’s and then they wouldn’t have to worry about me anymore. But if I go back to D’s, and they see me with my broken leg, not only will Ray be proved right, but they might not let me go back to Battery City ever again. Not after failing twice to get Gerard out of there.

“No,” I answer with a straight face. “I can’t go back until I find Gerard and bring him back with me.”

“Then it looks like you’re staying here.” She’s about to walk away before she stops and looks down at me. “Don’t look so angry about it. It doesn’t help.”

“Well things are pretty shitty right now, I think I have a right to look angry about it,” I mutter as I look straight on above me.

She makes a small laugh. “You know, Henry was almost as bad of a patient as you. Always whining and moaning. But he had so much courage and heart underneath everything I found annoying about him. And I have a feeling there’s a lot hiding within you, too.”

I look down, just thinking this over in my head. No one really goes out of their way to say things like this, except maybe Jamia. But that’s because she’s the closest person to me in the world and she reads me like an open book with large print. The fact that Masaki just does that without even knowing anything about me–except that I’m an annoying little asshole who just gets cranky when she’s the one nursing me back to health–that’s pretty amazing of her.

  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


It’s been four weeks now since I broke my leg.

The gun wounds on my upper body are almost completely healed and scarred over, so I can sit up now. And I can wear a shirt again. The muscles in my broken leg are also finally working again, and even though it still hurts a bit, I’m allowed to wear pants again. And I can limp if I really want to get around anywhere.

“Hey, you know it’s been a month now that I’ve been here?” I direct at Masaki while we’re sitting up in her living room section next to the low dinner table. I was looking at the calendar she had up on the wall. The last date the “X” was crossed out was Decemeber 22nd. Today.

“Wow, time has really flown by, hasn’t it?” she replies.

“Not quickly enough,” I breathe out.

Masaki puts down her bowl. “What is it, Frank?"She looks at me with a searching glow in her eyes. She knows I have something to say.

"It’s almost time. It’s almost time for me to go back,” I tell her with a straight face.

“You can’t even walk.”

“Yes, I can! Look!” I say as I do a very composed limp across the room.

“You can’t run. You can’t do anything useful in a fight with an injury like that,” Masaki tells me as she looks down at the hands in her lap.

"Daniel Larusso did in the Karate Kid!” I stupidly burst out.

Masaki frustratedly breathes out. “Do you have a deathwish or something? I told you, if you weren’t able to last five minutes inside Battery City with both of your legs fully functional, what makes you so confident that with a broken leg, you’d do any better?”

“It’s been a month, Masaki. I can’t wait much longer…” I say, trying to contain my emotions. “This isn’t some random thing I’m trying to do. I’ve been to Battery City, I’ve battled and won against BL/ind and SCARECROW agents time and time again. And I’ve succeeded in getting someone out of there before. It’s about time I’ve told you who I really am. I’m–”

“I know who you are. I knew it from the moment I saw them going after you at the border.” She gives me a hard stare. “You’re one of them. The Fabulous Killjoys.”

I don’t answer, but I gulp.

“You’re supposed to be dead. Why on Earth would you go back now?”

“I told you a million times: I’m rescuing a friend of mine,” I answer.

“He’s a Fabulous Killjoy, too?” she asks.

I nod.

“If the stories have any truth to them, then your friend is in a lot of trouble, isn’t he?”

I nod.

“Did you meet the Director of Better Living Industries?” Masaki asks me with a straight face.

I hesitate before answering and start to open my mouth, “Well–”

“That’s a no, then,” Masaki scoffs.

“What makes you so sure of that? I didn’t exactly meet her, but–”

“But if you had, you would be dead now,” Masaki cuts me off with a serious gaze. She stands up now. “Frank, you have no idea what you are going up against. The Director, she’s not someone to be trifled with.”

I snort out a laugh. “She’s just one woman, I’m more worried about the rest of the–”

“Then you are a fool!” Masaki cut me off. She looks like she’s shaking now. “She is no ordinary woman. She is the person responsible for Better Living Industries, for SCARECROW, for your broken leg! If you met her, she would have certainly killed you.”

“Listen, I don’t want to brag or anything, but I’m a Fabulous Killjoy. I’ve had my share of battles, I’ve fought against more than 30 people at a time, and I know how to handle myself. I’m still alive, aren’t I? What’s the worst that could happen one on one with this lady?”

“You could die!” she shouts at me. “Frank, tell me something… what happened when you encountered this woman?”

“It was at SCARECROW. We were all shot down, and she came down, looking at one of my friends, and she said that he and my other friend were going to become assets to her, and then she had them taken away.”

“Anything else?”

“Well…I remember her slapping Korse. That was kind of awesome,” I say with a chuckle.

“And what did Korse do?” Masaki questions, obviously not picking up on the funny aspect of what I told her.

“Nothing. He just took it.”

“The toughest exterminator out there gets slapped by a woman and takes it. What does that tell you?”

I sigh. “I don’t know…”

She rests her hand onto the table and gets up. She walks to her room and comes out after a few seconds with a stick in her hands that looks like polished mahogany, and it looks like…a sword?

“Come here,” she tells me as she stands near the doorway. I can see clearly now that the mahogany is the sheath, and just beyond the hilt guard of the sword is a hilt of a similar brown shade of ribbon.

“What?” I say with a laugh.

“I said come here!” she snaps at me. “Or are you not able to walk, like you said you were?”

I feel my heart racing now. She’s not fucking around. I grab onto the table and hoist myself up. I shuffle over near her.

“Frank, have you ever fought against someone with a katana?”

I let my eyebrows rise as I open my mouth to answer.

“I didn’t think so,” Masaki says before I can even let out a word.

“What does this have to do with anything?” I ask.

“Follow me,” she says as she starts to walk toward the front entrance. I shuffle after her until she suddenly whips around and throws open the doorway. “If you want me to take you to Battery City, if you want to earn my trust that you can really handle yourself out there, then get past me.” She stands still with the sword held across her front with two hands.

I laugh. “You’re joking, right?”

She doesn’t respond and simply stares at me.

I scoff. “Fine, then.” I stick out my chest, stand tall, and firmly plant my feet, one in front of the other, to one side of her.

She immediately sticks out her sword and lightly smacks my chest. I grab at it to try and take it away. Masaki moves quickly and pushes her weight forward on the sword, pushing me back.

I make a scowl, and this time I try and make a serious push around the other side of her. She darts back over here and places the sword in between me and the doorway again. I grab to push at it again, and she places her foot in between my foot and latches onto my left leg, pushing my chest back down with the mahogany sheath.

“Shit!” I hush out as my balance gives out and I fall backwards to the ground, thudding onto my back.

Masaki retreats from me and returns to her place at the doorway. I lean onto my elbow, and hoist myself up by first setting my weight on my right knee, and then I get my other leg up.

“You’re going to try again?” she asks me.

“Of course,” I huff out.

“Then come again and fail,” she tells me.

This time, I make the strategy to go for the sword first. I quickly saunter slightly to her left and grab at the sword with my left hand, so I can whip it away from me and–

“Guh!” She had turned around in the opposite direction and elbowed me in the stomach, while swiping the sword from its sheath to aim its point just under my throat. She now walks forward, pressing the sword against my skin–so obviously I back the fuck up.

I reach at my throat, feeling the slight cut and noting the blood on my fingertips. “You–you…” I stutter.

“Look at where you stand,” she tells me with a straight face as she smoothly moves the sword back into its sheath and makes the metal clap against the hilt guard. “And look at where I stand.”

I don’t say anything to her, but she continues. “You’re not strong enough to leave yet. And you certainly aren’t ready to face the Director.” She gives me a good stare now. “The Director fights with a katana. And that’s what you’ll have to beat her with.”

I crease my eyebrows. “Who said that I was ever planning on fighting her? I just want to get my friend Gerard out of there–”

I’m interrupted by the slam of the door closing again. Masaki has her back to me now. “If you plan on getting your friend out of Battery City, you need to be able to beat the Director.”

“How the hell do you come up with that batshit conclusion?” I mutter at her with a glare.

She turns around to face me. “Because there is no doubt in my mind that she has him. You said she wanted your friends to become assets to her, right? Otherwise she would have killed them on the spot.”

“How are you so sure of that?”

“Because I know the Director. And I know her methods. Unless she finds something worthy of value to her, she will dispose of it. And certainly when it comes to enemies, she never hesitates to finish them off. It’s something she was always ingrained with, and something she’s certainly been putting into practice as head of this warped government.”

“You know her? How do you know her? You’re like…” I was about to guess her age, but then I made the connection. Masaki is Japanese, and the Director is Asian, maybe Japanese. It seems a little bit more plausible that they might have known each other.

“That’s not important. What is important is you gather up your strength and rest for a few more weeks. At the level you’re at, even if I took you to Battery City, you’d only be capable of dying at the hands of the Director. Hell, you wouldn’t even make it that far with your broken leg. You can’t even make it past an old woman like me.”

I feel my nostrils flare. Everything she’s saying is true, but it’s making me so angry nonetheless. “I don’t care! No matter what it takes, no matter how much I have to suffer, I’m going to find Gerard and I’m going to get him out of there!”

“Even if you haven’t seen him in over a month? Even if he could already be weeks dead, you still wish to go to Battery City?”

“Yes,” I solidly reply with my hands clenched at my sides.

“Then you’re going to have to work hard. You’re going to have to become strong–stronger than you were before! And you’re going to have to learn how to use a katana. You’re going to have to learn how to defeat the Director with a katana. And it won’t be easy. It’ll be tough, it’ll make you bleed, and it’ll almost break you. But if you succeed, and if you put that relentless, stubborn attitude into your training, then there may be hope for you yet.”

“So you’re saying you’ll train me?”

“I can only do so much. I’ll train you with a katana. But the rest will be up to you to overcome.”

“Alright. When do we start?” I ask, liking the sound of this.

“Once you can get past me out through this door,” she says as she taps the door with the butt of her sword.


	5. Chapter 5

The next few weeks, I did nothing but work out and train my fighting skills.

It’s probably the most motivated I have ever been to get myself in good shape. I mean, sure, I used to work out in the old touring days of my youth, but this is a whole new level of obsession with my physique.

I decided to concede to Masaki’s concerns and completely laid off my left leg for a couple more weeks. Instead, I did a lot of upper body building, you know, push-ups, sit ups, pull-ups, a lot of “ups", and of course, weight lifting. Not that Masaki had weights or any gym equipment, but her house is on top of a rocky mountain, with a ton of rocks the size and weight of cinder blocks, which is something I’m kind of used to working out with.

Once my leg healed all the way, without feeling any sense of pain or weakness anymore, I started to strengthen my legs once more and I started doing more cardio—just kind of jumping and running around a lot more, really. If there’s one thing I’ll need in a fight against the director, it’s speed. And I’ve been sitting on my ass for nearly two months, so a lot of leg strength and speed has been lost. But as long as I keep up this strength training while learning how to use a sword, I should be fine.

The day I finally challenged Masaki to try and get past her out the door was a grand day indeed. Despite what anyone might have predicted, I didn’t just wait until I didn’t limp anymore. I wasn’t that stupid. I waited until my leg was 99% healed, so that I would be good to go for the training that would take place after.

“So, you’re finally ready to brave me again?” Masaki asked with a smirk on her face. She’s been looking more lively, and almost like she enjoys watching me strengthen myself.

“Yep,” I replied as I got up to stand opposite her.

She pushed her single shoulder-length gray braid over her shoulder and nodded her head. “Come on.”

I nodded with a smile and quickly stepped forward, noting that sheathed sword in her hand preparing to stop me. Before she could swing it in front of me, I dropped to the ground and rolled headfirst over the threshold to the outside world, which was full of sunlight and dirt.

I lifted my dusty head with a smile and looked back at Masaki. “So, are you ready to train me now?”

Her face looked so perplexed, with her mouth in a straight line and her eyebrows slightly creased.

“I mean, I _did_ get past you…” I said with a slight smile.

Masaki breathed shortly and replied, “A deal is a deal.” She lowered her sword and started to walk toward the living room.

“Hey, you’re not mad, are you?” I asked as I stood up, dusting the back of my shirt.

“No, I just didn’t think I’d be getting such a scrappy fighter out of you,” she replied without looking at me.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say I saw a bit of disappointment in your eyes. Disappointment that you didn’t get to knock me down for once,” I remarked as I followed her.

Masaki turned back to me and gave me a devilish smirk. “Oh, you’ll have plenty of chances to get knocked down, now that we’re starting the real training…”

After I finally got to start with the sword training, I quickly realized that it wasn’t going to be easy. I was kind of stupid to assume I’d be able to do anything with a sword one-handed without any prior training, and almost twisted my wrist the first time I tried to play around with one. Just lifting the damn sword, which weighed like five pounds, was taxing enough on my arms when I swung it around.

So Masaki started me off with a wooden stick, which I’m told is used for all beginning students. I found myself swinging at things a lot like a baseball bat, instead of like a sword. I’ll tell you, swinging around a stick isn’t nearly as badass as swinging around a cool samurai sword. Of course, you don’t need me to tell you that. Whoever I’m addressing with my thoughts…

Unlike the slash-and-attack I thought fighting with cool samurai swords would be, there is a lot of calmness and fluidity involved. It’s almost like a dance, yet there’s so much physical strength involved… kind of the way that playing guitar feels. Like there’s a certain motion, a certain pattern your blade is supposed to take, a direction it’s supposed to go in, and you just know, internally in your muscles… Like how my fingers travel up the strings of the fretboard on a guitar to play a riff that my hands have already memorized without me even thinking about it. Now just picture me playing guitar while doing something like standing on my head, and that’s what working with a sword is a lot like.

From then on, all I did was practice swordplay with Masaki. A lot of it was solo work, just practicing the different strikes, jabs, swings, and defense moves. A lot of “wax-on, wax-off" type stuff. I went to bed sore every single night and I have to admit, being just an average guy from New Jersey training with an elderly Japanese badass really made me feel like I was in The Karate Kid. I was having more fun than I thought I would. Too bad I don’t get a sweet vintage car out of all this work, though.

Masaki also had me train my reflex and agility, since apparently those are two of the most important physical abilities one needs to play with a samurai sword. Her way of doing this was having me swat at dry, uncooked beans that she pelted towards me.

“Alright, now I’m going to need you to slice every single one of these beans that I throw at you,” she told me.

I raised my eyebrows. “What?“

"We’re building up your speed and the accuracy of your aim. If you can hit a bean with the sword, it’s a good sign that you can deflect a laser with it, too,” she explained.

“A laser?! I thought you said that I’d be fighting the Director with a sword.”

“Yes, but she has the ability to deflect lasers with her sword, and she does it effortlessly. That’s the level you’ll need to be at to beat her,” Masaki continued with a sigh.

“Ugh, fine. Let’s start.”

“Alright. I’m going to set up a timer for two minutes, and we’ll see how many you can deflect. I’m going to start one at a time. But then I’m going to move onto two beans at a time. And then three. Let’s see how well you can do.”

It was fucking hard at first. I mean, you try just hitting a bean with a baseball bat, let alone cutting it in half with a sword. A lot of the time, I couldn’t even reach them, and I nearly ended up cutting myself with my practice sword. But after a few days, I finally started getting the hang of it, and I’m proud to say that I was able to deflect 75 beans on the 7th day of training.

The only downside to this “bean" training is that lasers are a bit faster and travel at a straighter angle than a pelted bean. But the good thing about lasers is that they’re a bit slower than bullets, and I can actually see lasers travel. So while it may be hard to accomplish, it’s very possible for me to deflect lasers. I suggested we switch out beans with ray guns for training, but Masaki doesn’t have that much confidence in me.

So we continued training and training everyday. When we weren’t training, we were either eating or sleeping. And even though Masaki’s old, the gal’s got moves. The first time we practiced sparring, she knocked me down in less than ten seconds. Which put a great smile on her face.

So all that recap brings us to today. Masaki and I are having our third semi-serious match against each other, using real swords, and pretty much not holding back. She’s beaten me the last two times, kind of easily, I must admit. But today’s the day. I have to beat her.

We stand out in the open dirt and face each other in the lowering afternoon sun.

“Ready?” Masaki calls out to me.

“Ready,” I say as I get my sword up.

She gets hers up, too, and nods before advancing. I advance the millisecond after I see her first foot move, and I quickly run, taking short, but graceful steps.

Our blades finally meet and clash, sending that reverberation up my wrists as soon as the dust rises up in the wind. I slide my blade down hers and she retreats for a second. Then she curves her sword toward me, and I return the curve. We clash like this a few more times until she starts attacking me very quickly. I parry each strike as I back up until I finally find it—the opening—and stab towards her. She backs up and raises her sword hilt up to the level of her chin.

No seconds wasted—I swing and knock her sword up into the air, stopping short with my blade a few inches from her throat.

I hear nothing but the wind and the small clatter Masaki’s sword makes as it hits the ground.

I did it. I won.

Masaki tilts her head back, looking out at me as her breath heaves. “Well done.”

I pull my sword back and sheath it, hearing the metal clap against the hilt with a satisfying “clink.“

"I didn’t think you had it in you, but you disarmed me,” Masaki continues to breathe out heavily.

“So I’m ready, aren’t I? I beat you, fair and square!” I tell her, trying to contain my gloating.

Masaki walks over to where her sword flew and picks it up. She quickly sheaths it and turns around to face me. “You’re still not ready yet, Frank.“

I crease my eyebrows. “What?! I just beat you! I’ve been training so hard and we fought an epic duel and I beat you!”

“Yes, you beat me, Frank. But I’m an old woman. And you’ve been training with me for weeks now. You’re familiar with my fighting—”

“What does all that mean? I beat you. I fucking katana-ed that shit out of the ball park! My leg is back to normal, I feel stronger, and faster, and I know how to fight with a katana now—”

“But you still have no sense of self preservation!” she barks at me.

I glare at her as I open my mouth in perplexity. “What the fuck does that have to do with anything?“

"It has everything to do with fighting, Frank!” Masaki says as she walks up to me. “You have to fear for your life in a fight. You have to want to protect yourself at all costs—you want to do everything in your power to keep yourself alive, to keep yourself from dying—and that is what makes the difference between a good fighter and a great one! If you aren’t afraid for your life, you won’t fight as hard, and you’ll leave yourself open to more attacks.“

"That’s fucking bullshit. I don’t need fear for my life to help me fight better. I have enough drive in wanting to fight for the people I care about.”

Masaki says nothing more and turns around to go back inside the house.

“Fucking hell…” I softly mutter out to the wind.

We didn’t speak at all for the rest of the day. I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about, no sense of self preservation… I mean, yeah, I’ve always been kind of reckless, but I’m still alive. Doesn’t that mean something, considering all the trouble and near death experiences I’ve had? I mean, if I didn’t have a sense of self preservation, I think I would have been dead by now.

Tomorrow will be January 28th. It’s been over two months since the last time I saw Gerard. There’s no telling what could have happened to him in all that time. But I haven’t given up. I think he’s alive. And I’m all healed, literally in never-better condition physically. If I don’t go now, I’ll never go.

After I make sure Masaki is asleep in the early morning, I gather my things, including the sword I’d been practicing with. Now the only thing to do is get the keys to her truck.

I stalk my way over to the dining area, where she has her keys hanging from a tack on the wall. Keeping my footsteps as silent as possible, I walk up to the wall. I quietly pick up the keys, making the smallest *clink* sound.

“So you’re leaving?”

The hairs on the back of my neck stuck up and froze. I whip around and see Masaki standing off to the side. She has her arms crossed and she looks pissed.

“I’ve waited long enough, Masaki. Two months. If I don’t leave now, I might never leave,” I tell her.

She looks down and nods. “Frank. Please, hear me out. You’re not ready.“

She looks up at me with this odd expression in her eyes, almost as if she’s pleading… I’ve never seen her look like this before.

"At least…before you go. There’s something you need to know,” she tells me.

I turn around to fully face her.

“I need to tell you…the story about how I know the Director.”

I feel my eyes widen.

“Please, sit down.” Masaki walks over and lights a few candles on the dining table. I sit down across from her, waiting patiently for the story.

“Henry and I had been married twenty-two years before I decided to quit being a nurse and he decided to open up a bushido martial arts training facility—samurai sword combat, basically. Henry had been taught bushido by his parents, and their parents were masters in their art as well. It was another aspect about Henry that made him such a good soldier. Anyway, Henry retired from the army but he decided to become a teacher because he wanted to pass along to future generations what he was taught.

"He taught me while we were still young, so I was able to assist him in the workshops with the children. We did this for many years, and about twenty years ago, the brightest pupil we had ever seen in our lifetimes entered our dojo. Her name was Fuu, short for Fumiko, and she was a young girl of eight. She handled a katana better than all the pupils her age, and was even better than the junior level students. She was remarkable. She went on to win at competitions, getting trophy after trophy, and by age 12, she was training with Henry and the older advanced students. By age 16, she surpassed everyone in the program, including Henry.

"Fuu was a sweet girl at the beginning. She fought honorably with good sportsmanship, even though she knew she was more highly skilled than her peers. But after she began winning so many titles, she began to take it very seriously. She didn’t smile anymore when she won, and she fought using every advantage she had and went for any opening she found. She didn’t fight dirty, but she showed no mercy. We never really pried into the private lives of our students, but because Fuu was there for so long, we knew a bit more about her than the rest. Out of all her events, I only remember seeing her parents at one or two of them. Usually, she was dropped off by one of them and they returned at the end of the competitions to pick her up. By the time she was in high school, it was apparent that she was very stressed out with trying to get into college, meanwhile her parents forced her to join certain academic clubs as well as practice at our dojo. Each week seemed to bring more bitterness out of Fuu, although she continued to win competitions. And finally one day, she challenged Henry to a duel. It was one that she fought seriously, and she beat him, mercilessly. From that day on, we never saw her again.”

Masaki takes a deep breath.

“Henry died two years after that. And the next time I saw Fuu was in 2015. She was on my TV screen, as the newly appointed Director of Better Living Industries. I recognized that cold stare, and that victorious smile. I couldn’t believe what she’d become, and not out of disdain—but out of respect. She had worked so hard, and now she was the new head of that giant company, which would later become the head of our new world. And I know it was her experience in our training facility that shaped that person, that person who wished to defeat all her foes, and would settle for nothing short of absolute domination.”

Maski finally grew quiet for a few seconds.

“So, what? You don’t want me to go after her because you have a soft spot for her or something?” I ask with a crease in my forehead. Because that’s sure what it sounds like. Masaki’s talking about the Director like she’s some fucking saint.

Masaki looks straight at me. “No. Quite the opposite. I want you to meet up with Fuu, and I want you to run your sword through her.“

I must have looked shocked because Masaki cleared her throat then. “She killed Henry.”

“I thought you said he died two years—”

“He did. He died of heart failure two years after the stroke. Which happened the minute right after Fuu beat him. And the idiot…” Her eyes start to glisten. “He sent her a letter telling her not to worry about him, and how proud he was of her progress. She never had the decency to reply or send him any regards. You can imagine how furious I was, but Henry…he always told me to just let it go. And it was only five years after his death that I had my chance to speak to Fuu again.

“BL/ind was having one of their parades, and I was still living in the city, so I went with the hope that I would see her. I waited in the sidelines like all the others, and being elderly must have gotten me special treatment, because she went up to me, singling me out in the part of the crowd I was standing in. She smiled down at me, as if she had no recollection of who I was. I told her ‘Fuu, it’s me. Masaki Ninomiya, from Henry’s dojo,’ and her face suddenly turned sour. She replied, ‘don’t ever speak of that pitiful place, with a pathetic teacher who couldn’t even beat his 16-year old pupil.’ I was shocked. We had been nothing but welcoming and warm to her all those years that she had been with us—and for her to speak like that of Henry—it made me so angry, I couldn’t keep quiet. So I said some harsh things back to her, that she was the pathetic one to gloat about beating an ailing, 70-year old man. That made her angry, but she said no more. Yet two days later, the authorites arrived at my house, and ordered me to be placed in a BL/ind institution for the elderly upon request of the Director, who had volunteered to pay for all my expenses—in other words, she ordered me to be placed into a prison to slowly die. I couldn’t do anything to get out of it, since the arrangements were already made. So I did what I could and I ran away, out to the Zones. Back then, they were a lot less strict on border control, and no one asked any questions. I’ve been out here ever since.”

I keep quiet for a long time after Masaki finished talking. She’s quiet too, and between our silence, I think I can hear the sun come up.

“So you want revenge?” I finally ask her.

Masaki sighs. “I’m too old for revenge, and I wouldn’t think about asking you to avenge me or my husband. But…once I saw you, once I heard what you wanted to do…I knew that I could help you. And in helping you I would be helping myself, if you were able to defeat Fuu, that is.“ She pauses and looks over at me with tears. “But now… I can’t… I’m sorry for being so selfish, Frank! Please don’t go! You’re not ready. And if I can help it, I won’t send another person to be killed by that wretched woman.”

My eyes had watered at the sight of Masaki’s crying. I look down. I don’t know what to do now…

“I have to go…” I start with my perpetual argument.

“Frank… You’re all I have in this world now. I don’t want to see you sacrifice yourself. Please.”

I take in a deep breath and stand up. Masaki looks up at me with red, tearful eyes.

“Tell me the truth,” I direct at her. “Am I ready?“

She sighs. “You have grown so much. You have become such a talented swordsman, for having only learned in such a small amount of time. But I meant what I said after our last duel. You don’t have a sense of self-preservation. And when it comes down to it, that will be your downfall. If you’re going to fight the Director, you’re going to have to give it absolutely everything you have. No mercy. No hesitation. You will have to fight to kill, because killing her is the only way you will save yourself.”

“So you’re saying…once I learn that, then I’m set to go?” I ask.

Masaki doesn’t answer right away. “I’m not sure you’ll ever learn it, if you haven’t by now.”

I put my hands on my hips and sigh.

“But give me a week. A week to plan this. And then I’ll let you go. I can’t force you to learn to have a sense of self preservation, but I’m not sending you in there without a plan.”

I don’t say anything and sigh. I shrug off the sword and my pack, and return to bed.

Masaki smiles. “Thank you for staying, Frank.”

“Yeah,” is all I mutter out as I go back to sleep.


	6. Chapter 6

It really did take a week for Masaki to tell me her plan. I mean, I didn’t think it would take the whole seven days to figure it out, but that gave me more time to continue training.

“We’re going to catch ourselves an agent,” she tells me while we’re having tea on the seventh morning since I first tried to unsuccessfully leave.

“What do you mean?” I ask her with a narrowed eye.

She smiles. “You need to get close to the Director, right? Well, there’s no way that’s going to happen unless you do a repeat of what you did in Battery City in November. And we both know how well that worked…”

I roll my eyes. “So…”

“So…” Masaki continues with a smile, “You’re going in there as an agent. All we have to do is find one, dispatch of him, take his badge and uniform, and you’re all set. Get into BL/ind headquarters, using the agent’s badge to get in, pose as an employee, find the Director, and then…showtime.”

That plan actually sounds a bit…brilliant. There has to be holes in it, though…

“Don’t worry, as long as you dress and act the part, no one can question you, especially if you have a badge. BL/ind agents go missing or die in action all the time. And there’s so many of them, that it’s probably unlikely someone would question your presence there,” Masaki continues.

“But…won’t people recognize me?” I ask. “You know, how my face was on every flier and screen in Battery City…”

“That was over two months ago, Frank,” Masaki tells me. “You’ve been dead for two months. No one’s going to be making connections, especially if you look a lot different than you used to.”

I nod my head but then stop. “Wait…what do you mean, look a lot different?”

Masaki briefly clears her throat. “Well…you can’t expect someone who works for BL/ind to have long hair like that.” She gestured at my hair. “Besides, you already have tattoos on your neck and a scar across your cheek. We’re gonna have to clean you up real good if you want to really convince people that you work for Better Living Industries.”

Ugh, lame… but I guess this all makes sense. “Okay,” I reply. “So you clean me up, I pass off as an employee, and then once I meet the Director…I’ll have to fight her?”

“You don’t have a choice. You can ask her about your friend, but there’s no way that you can do that without revealing who you really are, and if there’s any chance of finding him, you’re going to have to force her to tell you and make sure that she doesn’t call for backup. Either way you look at it, you’re going to have to knock her down to get to your friend. And especially if you want to get out of Battery City safely, you’re going to have to make sure she doesn’t come after you. And the only way of ensuring that is to–”

“Kill her,” I finished.

“Yes,” Masaki added.

I sigh as I put my hands on my thighs. “Well, let’s go catch our agent.”

We set out on the road towards the border of Zone 2. It’s actually the first time that I’ve realized that Masaki lives in Zone 2. We’re in the southern region, and we’re heading toward the northern border, sure to meet agents on the way.

Over in this part of the desert, there are a lot more agents patrolling and less Killjoys than in the outer regions where the other guys and I used to stay. A bit more dangerous up here, but nothing we can’t handle.

“See those agents up there? We’re gonna go get them,” Masaki says as she points toward two agents walking in the desert. Sometimes agents ventured where cars couldn’t go so they could find Killjoy hideouts. Today wasn’t going to be their lucky day.

“Alright!” I say as I leap up in the seat next to Masaki in her truck.

She looks at me from the side. “Don’t get so eager about this. This is the first time you’ll be fighting agents since you broke your leg. Be careful.”

“Pssh–This is going to be fun!” I return as I get my ray gun ready.

She breathes out a “hmmph” and stops the car. “This is as far as I can go with the truck. Go ahead, I’ll catch up. And remember–keep their uniforms clean.”

“I got it!” I say as I open the door and leap out. I start out at a run, keeping myself as low to the dry desert plants as possible. These two agents look like they’ve been walking for a while, with how heavy their steps seem to be. Their slouched shoulders also lead me to believe that they look a bit tired. It’s the perfect time to pounce on them.

I stalk forward, quickly moving through the desert behind them. Once I’m within five feet of them, I lunge for the shorter agent and take him down to the ground.

“Hey!” his friend shouts as he whips out his gun and aims at me.

“Oh, shit,” I let out as I roll over on the dirt, bringing my prey over me as a shield.

“Ahh!” my shield/agent screams out as he gets shot. “Don’t you know how to shoot, asshole?”

His friend looks down in horror. “I’m sorry, I just–”

“Just get this guy away from me!” the agent on top of me yells.

I place my hands under his back and push him forward with so much force that he actually gets pushed onto his friend, who clumsily drops his ray gun.

Keep the outfits clean…but the only way to get rid of them is to–

“Hah!” Masaki had yelled this out as she struck a blow to the taller agent’s head.

The shorter agent topples to his knees, hand placed at his ribs. Masaki aims her ray gun at him and I quickly place my arm around him in a chokehold.

“Just kill me,” the agent says in a really pitiful tone.

“Not just yet,” Masaki says as she keeps her gun pointed at him. “Tell us, do you live alone?”

“What?” the agent questions. “Why should I tell you–ow!”

I had lightly struck his head with my ray gun for not answering. “Just answer our questions.”

“Yeah, I live alone.”

“And your friend? What about him?” Masaki continues questioning.

“Y-yeah…I think so… But even if he didn’t, I wouldn’t tell you! Filthy Killjoys!” The agent struggles and tries to punch at me.

“Hey–just relax–"I say as I struggle against him.

*PEW*

But my words aren’t needed. Masaki had shot at his chest and the agent slumped over.

She sighs. "I didn’t want it to get to this point if I could help it, but he was about to kill you.”

“What do you mean? I had him in a hold,” I question with a crease in my brow.

“Look at where his left hand is,” Masaki tells me.

I follow where the agent’s left hand stiffly lies, and see that it’s on his right hip, where a small ray gun is oddly aimed backwards. If he was alive for one more second, he would have taken a clear shot at me.

“Whoa…” I let out as I stand up.

“Yeah. Anyway, you can’t take his clothes, they’re bloodstained. You don’t want people asking you questions. So we’ll take this other guy’s clothes. Just take the dead guy’s badge.” Masaki lets only one second pass before she starts to strip the other agent of his black vest, and then the rest of his clothes. I would have preferred to have the shorter guy’s uniform, since that might fit me better. But I can’t be too picky in this situation.

I bend down and fish around the dead agent’s shirt for the badge. I finally find it clipped just inside his chest pocket. The card is unlike a regular identity card because there is no picture of the agent’s face. Probably due to the whole face-less thing of being a BL/ind agent. But his name, address, and blood type are still on here. Jim Haskell. Blood type A/B. District 5, sector B, #67.

“You should use that man’s ID as your own. Especially since he’s dead, you can hide out at his place and you won’t have anyone come knocking on your door. It’ll definitely beat staying underground,” Masaki tells me as she finishes getting the last of the unconcious agent’s clothes off.

I stand up straight and look over the two agents’ bodies. The taller one looks pretty damn pathetic stripped down to nothing but his underwear.

“What are we gonna do about this guy?” I ask Masaki, gesturing to the one she’s handling.

She stares at the ground, and then at me. “Did he get a good look at you?”

I shrug my shoulders. “I don’t know. I snuck up from behind and used this other guy as a shield most of the time. You think he might report this?”

Masaki looks grave. “It’s very possible.

"So…what do we do?”

“We don’t really have a choice,” Masaki says with a sigh as she looks down. “I either have to take him as a prisoner or kill him. There’s no doubt in my mind that he’ll lament his friend being struck down. And if that happens, and they search this other guy’s residence, it’ll be curtains for you.”

I start to pace around the dirt in this small space. I’ve killed lots of agents, many times. I guess this one feels kind of bad because this time, I’m the one who was seeking these guys out, not the other way around.

“Well, the least we can do is bury his friend and leave this other guy somewhere far away,” I suggest.

“There’s too many other agents around this area. Someone will find him…” Masaki counters.

“So what should we do?” I ask, feeling helpless.

Masaki puts a hand on her chin. “I…I’ll take care of this right now.” She takes her ray gun out of her holster and points it toward the agent’s head. “I’m sorry,” she says.

“Wait,” I interrupt her just as she’s about to pull the trigger.

I clear my throat. “I’ll do it. It’s my problem, my mission. The blood should be on my hands.”

I replaced the mask on this guy’s head before I shot him down. It was more honorable that way, for him to die with his mask on, even though he was basically half naked. With a heavy heart, Masaki and I buried the two agents and returned back to her house before the sun even set.

“It was a noble thing you did,” she tells me. “I could see how difficult it was for you. I just want you to know that…I have a great respect for you, for what you did.”

I sigh. “Thanks.”

“Don’t dwell on it for too long, Frank. There are casualties in every war. Casualties that never should be. But they happen. And you shouldn’t feel too much guilt for it. You’re fighting the good fight.”

I know all this. I’ve told myself almost the same speech so many times. This time…I just felt kind of bad about it. But Masaki’s right. I have to look forward. In less than 24 hours, I will be in Battery City. What I’ve been working toward these past two and a half months, what I’ve been agonizing over, will finally come. I’m finally going to get a legitimate chance at finding Gerard. And this time, I really am not leaving until I find out where he is, and if he’s alive, I’m taking him back with me.

“I know,” I tell her, trying to smile. “I won’t let anything set me back.”

She smiles at me. “Well, then, let’s get you bathed and get started on that haircut!”

Masaki had me go in a tub, using a decent amount of water and her finest soaps and oils to wash off the filth from my body and make my hair shiny and oil-free. After that’s done, I sit with her in front of a mirror, while she gets various scissors and a buzzer out to cut my hair.

“You do this a lot?” I playfully ask her.

She softly laughs. “Well, the last time I cut a man’s hair was ten years ago. I just hope I haven’t lost my touch!”

She takes scissors first and cuts great chunks of my hair out, which fall to the ground like feathers. It takes her about 45 minutes to finish the haircut, and by the time everything’s all done with, and pieces of my hair are scattered on the ground like remains of a giant blackbird’s moltings, I look completely different.

My hair isn’t the shortest it’s ever been, but it’s sheared close to my head, small thick tufts sticking up a bit at the back of my head. My natural hairline leaves a voluminous little tuft to float just above my forehead and lean to the right. My head feels like it weighs ten pounds less, and when I turn, it almost feels like whip lash. Masaki combs it neatly, parting it so that as little as possible stood up.

“Wow, you look like a new man!” she jokingly tells me as she looks at me through the reflection of the mirror.

I softly laugh. “Yeah, yeah… It’ll take a bit of getting used to, but you did a grand job. Thank you.”

While Masaki sweeps up my sheared hair, I shave off the small beard and moustache I’ve grown over the past month. It’s weird seeing a clean-shaven, short-haired me. I haven’t looked like this in years.

“Come over here when you’re done. I have something for you,” Masaki calls out from her seat on her bed.

I clean up my area and then follow her to her small closet. She enters alone and I can hear the shifting of wire hangers across the bar where a lot of clothes hang. I hope she’s not lending me some of her clothes…

After a few seconds, she comes out of the closet with a suit encased in a large plastic bag.

“You’ll need this if you want to look like you work for BL/ind,” she tells me. “Now go ahead, get the shirt and pants on. I’ll help you with the coat and tie,” she continues with a smile as she unzips the parcel.

I take the clothes and put them on. It’s been…a lifetime…since I wore any kind of suit. The silky fabric feels real nice against my skin. The pants are a bit baggy towards my ankles, but they fit fine. The shirt is also a bit form-fitting, but I’ll have the coat over it to work with.

“Henry’s clothes fit you well,” Masaki remarks with a bright smile. “Let me get the coat on.” She gestures for me to turn around and fits the coat on me. I shrug it on to fit more comfortably while she walks around in front of me to start doing the tie. Once she finishes that, she neatly tucks the white collar of the shirt down. She then stands back a few feet and just stares.

I fidget and place a hand into one of the coat pockets. This coat feels very nice and soft, too. I like it. “So what do you think?” I ask her.

She makes a strange face, and I notice now that she has tears in her eyes. “It looks very good. You’re a whole new man with that suit and haircut. I wouldn’t question you if I saw you in BL/ind headquarters.”

I smile at her, my teeth showing. “Thank you. I know how much this means for you.”

She waves a hand nonchalantly. “It’s nothing. Just a little gift from me. You’re gonna need something to go to work in. If only I could get some makeup to cover up those tattoos, then we’d really be getting somewhere!” She was laughing now. “Of course, I would probably just wear gloves if I was you. Those hands might make people give you more stares than you need.”

I let out a soft laugh as I look down at my heavily tattooed hands. “I’m used to it. If anything, I’ll just say I’m a reformed convict. You can’t argue with the suit, anyhow.”

Masaki nods with a warm expression. Then she takes in a deep breath. “You should get some rest now. We have a big day ahead of us tomorrow. You’ll need all the strength you can get.”

I’m about to take off my new coat when Masaki interrupts,“Actually…I have one more thing to give you.”

She gracefully and quietly walks over to her bed and kneels down. She reaches under the frame and pulls out a large parcel. It’s a long red box that she opens up from its broad side. She reaches inside and pulls out a shining black sheath of a katana, with a silver and black-ribboned hilt and a silver tassel hanging off of it.

Masaki keeps the sword delicately stretched between her two palms as she rises. She turns to me and starts walking.

I know where this is going and I can’t believe it.

“I want you to have this,” she says as she moves the sword close to me. I outstretch my hands and take the sword into my palms.

“I can’t…” I start.

“Yes, you can,” Masaki returns. “It’s the best sword I know of, and worthy of being used for such a noble cause as yours. I think Henry would be okay with you having it.”

“Masaki, I can’t take this. It’s your husband’s…” I start, feeling guilty. “You should treasure it.”

“I’m old and Henry’s already been dead for ten years!” Masaki says with a bit of a smile. “I don’t need it anymore. But you do. Practice with it a bit before you go to sleep. You’ll note its superior craftsmanship.”

“Thank you,” I say as I bow forward, just like we do in practice. If there was any time to show Masaki respect, it was now.

As she got ready for bed, I practiced with Henry’s katana. It’s lighter than the one I’d been practicing with, but it feels like it packs as much of a punch. I was able to move with it more easily than my practice one. I feel very honored to have been given this, and I will do everything in my power to ensure that it’s not been given to me in vain.

  
  


  
  


  
  


The next morning–well, it was like 4 in the morning–Masaki and I quickly got ready. I dressed up in the BL/ind agent’s outfit, which was slightly oversized, since the guy who originally wore it was like six inches taller than me. I simply folded the pants a few times at the ankle and once I put on the black vest, the bagginess of the clothes was hidden.

Masaki gave me a business briefcase to pack my various personal items in: my regular clothes, a pair of Henry’s dress shoes, the 2500 C’s we took from the BL/ind agents, a few small weapons, and some food for the road. Masaki also gave me a soft portable case for Henry’s sword, which I can sling onto my back. If anyone questions me, the plan is to say that I found this somewhere in the Zones, and to say that it’s a gift for the Director, if worst comes to worst.

“Take these,” she says once we pile into her truck. She hands me a few small dark spheres. “Put them into one of your pockets.”

“What are these?” I ask.

“Smoke bombs, to get you out of a tight space,” she tells me with a smile. “All you have to do is light them.”

I take the small smoke bomb balls and stuff them into one of my vest pockets. “Thanks. Hey…how do you know how to make this stuff? And you have like grenades and launchers on your car…?”

Masaki smiles. “Henry showed me how. A long time ago, when we were still dating, he tried to impress me by showing me how he put together all his little weapons in Vietnam. I thought it was stupid because why would I ever need to know this? But you know…now, it’s a good thing I know.”

“That doesn’t explain the fucking launchers on your truck,” I add with a scoff.

Masaki laughs. “Frank, I worked for the army for forty years. After the fires and the other disasters, most of them were abandoned. High artillery weapons were left unguarded. And I needed to make sure I kept myself well defended, so I went out and took some weapons. It’s that simple.”

I scoff. “ _That simple_ …”

“Anyway, do you have everything?” she asks me as she settles into the driver seat.

“I think so,” I reply.

“Good. Because now we’re leaving.”

It was a quiet drive to Battery City that didn’t take more than an hour. We got to the Eastern Gate of the City before the sun was even up.

Masaki stops the car about half a mile away from the gate. “This is as far as we go. Last chance to back out.”

“I’m not backing out,” I tell her with half a smile.

She nods and subtly breathes out a sigh. “Well, you better get going before the sun gets up.”

I unbuckle my seat belt and grab the briefcase before I open the truck’s door and get outside to stretch. Before I turn to go, I tell Masaki, “When all this is over, I’ll come back.”

She smiles with tears in her eyes. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Frank.”

My mouth tightens. “I mean it. Your teaching, your care, none of it’s going to go to waste. And I’ll be back to return this.” I raise up the sword she gave me.

Masaki looks down and smiles. “Just stay alive, Frank. Don’t worry about an old lady like me. I hope you find your friend.”

“Thanks,” I reply. “For everything.”

Masaki nods. “Go on, before someone catches you out here with me. Good luck.”

I nod and finally turn around to get going. Masaki drives away, but waits in the distance. It’s still dark out, so I can barely see her with her headlights off.

I gulp and adjust the white collar around my neck, which suddenly started to feel tight. I walk up to the gate, the real one this time, and present my stolen card to the blue-lighted scanner.

“ACCESS GRANTED” a female robot voice announces. The door’s latch unlocks and I pull it open. I step through the barrier and feel slightly cooler once I’m on Battery City ground. Time to go.

The city is practically empty at this time of early morning, lonely sidewalks and skyscrapers surrounding the black concrete. Everything has white or blue lights on it, mostly BL/ind ads. It’s almost beautiful, the way everything is so tranquil and softly lit. But when you realize that there’s nothing out here, and you notice how your footsteps are the only sound on this cement, it starts to kind of feel like a nightmare in a concrete and glass labyrinth.

With briefcase in hand and Henry’s sword slung on my back, I walk in the direction of agent Haskell’s home neighborhood. I hope I get there quick. I don’t want to run into–

–and _of course_ the graveyard shift patrol happens to light up behind me now. It’s a shiny white car with blue flashing lights atop its roof. It speeds and whirs close to me on the curb before it stops. I have no choice but to stop.

A man dressed in a white police uniform, with a white BL/ind cap and white gloves to match, steps out of his white car. He seems to not be in much of a rush, and his casual gait makes me ease up the tension in my shoulders.

“Good morning,” the man pleasantly addresses me. “Might I be curious to know what you are doing walking around at this time? You do realize that the curfew is still up for another two hours.”

My throat tightens. Shit. What do I say?

“I… I just returned from–” I start.

“Oh, right! You’re an agent. But why don’t you have your mask on?”

“Um, I…lost it,” I reply, feeling myself sweat. I forgot to wear the mask, because wearing it made me feel claustrophobic when I first tried it on. It’s here in the briefcase, though.

“Lost it? Man, don’t you know how many demerits you get for losing your mask? What were you thinking?!” the policeman asks me. He seems to have bought the fact that I’m a BL/ind agent. Now I just have to convince myself.

“I… I…couldn’t stop them,” I start in a wavering voice.

“Stop who, son?”

“The…Killjoys!” I answer in a fearful voice. “They shot down my partner, and, and, I was so afraid they were going to shoot me, too! It was awful!”

“Now calm down, son, Killjoys aren’t all that scary…” the policeman was rolling his eyes.

I shake my head frantically. “Not these ones…they’re–they were like demons! Quick, coming out of nowhere–and it was my first time ever being on assignment out in the Zones and–” I rush a hand over my eyes.

The policeman gingerly walks up to me and places a hand on my shoulder. “There, there, young soldier… It won’t be so bad in the future.”

“…In the future?! You mean they’re gonna send me back out there?!” I exclaim while making myself shake.

“Be brave!” the police man encourages. “You survived, didn’t you?”

I heave a pathetic sigh. “Yeah… But I ran. I ran and didn’t stop until I got back to Battery City, and now… Oh, sir, I’m so thankful to see another BL/ind official!”

I throw myself forward and embrace the man. He flinches against my touch. “Well–uh–it’s alright, son.” He clears his throat. “Tell me, where do you live?”

I slowly take myself from him and gather myself. “Oh…” I reach for my badge and present it to the police man. “District 5, sir.”

“Well, why don’t I give you a lift home? You seem… distraught.”

“Oh, thank you sir! I really appreciate it,” I reply to him. Hmm, this is going better than I thought.

“Of course…Jim, was it?” He must have read the name on the card.

“Yeah, Jim’s my name,” I reply with a smile. It feels so weird to say that.

“Well, Jimmy boy, let’s get you home, and trust me, take some of those Miracle pills, take a nap, and you’ll feel all better.” The policeman returns to his side of the car and I get into the passenger seat, settling down into its fresh black leather interior.

“Thank you, sir,” I repeat.

It was a quick drive to agent Jimmy’s neighborhood. The policeman kept quiet the whole time, probably to keep me from busting out melodramatic lines again. At least he didn’t ask me about the sword on my back.

“Here we are, District 5 center. You’ll be alright son?” the policeman asks as I exit the vehicle.

“Yes, sir. Thank you! Thank you so much!” I say again.

“Anytime,” the policeman says before I close the door.

I was dropped off at the center of this neighborhood, marked by a small electronic clock tower made up of a concrete spire. It’s surrounded by a fake flower bed made up of blue and green electric lights.

I look up and see the time. 5:42. The sky is getting dark purple now.

The building where I’m supposed to go is only a couple blocks past the clock tower and I should get there fairly quickly. I kind of remember this neighborhood from back when I lived in Battery City, but it’s a lot different. Everything looks more uniform and similar to each other. Disgustingly square and sterile.

I reach building 5-67 soon and enter its doors with my card. The good thing about having a BL/ind identification card is that it literally gives me access to any building in the city. That’s how a lot of rebels were arrested back in the day, since nothing stopped agents from getting into people’s apartment complexes to question them. It’s a really shitty and unconstitutional government privilege, but right now, I’m thankful for it.

Right in the center of the gray, shiny lobby, there’s a holographic directory with everyone’s names on it. I find “Haskell, Jim” on floor 6, room c. I enter the silver-doored elevator and its soft bell rings as the doors open to the 6th floor. I walk towards my newly acquired apartment through the fluorescent-lighted hallway laiden with black linoleum. I reach my door, which is black, and present my ID card to the scanner. A blue light blinks up at me from the door and the lock releases.

The apartment is pretty spacious, with only one bedroom but a giant living room, a pretty big bathroom, a decent sized kitchen, and even a balcony to get a view of the monotonous city skyline. The color scheme is black and white, which isn’t bad, but just boring. There doesn’t seem to be any pictures anywhere, and the place is as tidy as a hotel room. Almost no personal posessions here, not even half the closet or wardrobe filled up. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say that this _was_ a hotel suite. Or maybe BL/ind agents were just never home long enough to make a mess?

I walk over to the glass just behind the balcony and look out. The sky has a weird lavender-gray haze, more gray than lavender. I can’t believe I’m back in this city.

I made it. I’m in.


	7. Chapter 7

I would like to say that the same day I got to Battery City, I got into BL/ind headquarters, cornered the Director while she was alone, got her to tell me where Gerard was, and then defeated her, and then got Gerard out of there, but–

Things weren’t going to be that easy.

The first thing I did was sleep. Agent Jimmy’s bed was actually really soft and downy, and I had like the best five-hour nap of my life. And then after that, I decided to plan things out. I know. Me, plan?

Well, I’d waited more than two months for this opportunity. I could handle a little more time waiting, and I can’t fail this time around. Third time’s the charm, right?

First things first: I need to get into BL/ind and find out how to get the Director alone. Something tells me it won’t be that easy. But if I go there as an undercover employee, I bet I can find out more stuff, get access, at least find out where she is at all times and with who. The only problem is how do I do that without anyone noticing or getting suspicious of me?

Well, the answer didn’t come to me right away, so I decided to step out into the city to do some grocery shopping since Jimmy’s fridge was empty except for these weird packets of energy drinks. I’m not sure how long I’ll be here, and I only packed so much food in that briefcase.

I raided Jimmy’s closet and picked out a boring outfit of a blue polo and beige khaki’s, with a gray hoodie on. It reminded me of how I used to dress back when I was a telephone operator back in my teenage years. The fucking horror. Anyway, I bought some edible shit, stuck it into the empty fridge, and then chilled out the rest of the day. Not the most exciting end to an initially suspenseful day, but that was yesterday.

Today, I’m going to work.

I put on the suit and tie that Masaki gave me, combed my hair, and made sure I didn’t smell. The shoes she lent me are a little too big, but agent Jimmy luckily had some dress shoes that were just my size.

I inhale and exhale deeply. Just breathe. It may be the first time in a few years that I’m going to be out in the open in Battery City, in broad daylight, but I have nothing to worry about. I look like an agent. I have a badge. No one’s going to recognize me unless they pay real good attention to my tattoos.

I step out the glass doors of my apartment building and head to the metro station. It’s not too far from here, and I just need to get on the Central line, take it to Downtown, get off at Central Station, and then walk to BL/ind headquarters. Nothing complicated.

As I walked down the street to the metro station, it kind of freaked me out to see so many people about. This place is a pure metropolis now, the sidewalks crowded with people walking in perfectly divided opposite directions. Everyone is wearing a suit, or for some ladies, business skirts. My BL/ind card gets me through the plastic clear doors of the metro entrance and people smile at me everywhere I go. It’s freaking me the fuck out. I don’t care where you’re from, New York, New Jersey, L.A.: it’ just not normal for people in a subway station to smile at one another as they walk by.

Of course, this doesn’t really resemble a subway station. For one, it doesn’t smell like garbage or sewer, it just smells like sterilized plastic. The tiling is all white, there’s no grafitti anywhere, everything is perfectly clean, and the tunnels are plastered with advertisements and slogans from BLI.

I wait at the platform for my train, and people patiently wait while lined up behind the yellow line. And it’s kind of quiet. I look around me and see that there’s a bunch of teenage schoolgirls waiting for the train, and even they are quiet. They’re wearing these gray uniforms, staring forward, looking pale. Was this what Leya looked like before she became a Killjoy?

Before I could think too much on that question, the train arrived and I quickly settled into a plastic blue seat. There was no big bustling, no push. Most people just kind of walked into file and went for the nearest available seat. Like fucking robots, or computer programs. Which reminds me, I have to make sure I don’t look too expressive. I relax my jaw, stare straight in front of me, and keep my hands clutched on the handle of my briefcase over my lap.

It takes twenty minutes for my train to reach Central Station. A lot of people get off here. A lot of them have BL/ind cards like me, so I’m feeling assured I’m in the right place. I file in line along with the rest, all the way to the escalators that take us up to the street level. The sky is a bit overcast, as it often is here in Battery City because of all the pollution in the atmosphere, but there is an unsettling warmth in the air. I hurry and follow some of my fellow suited BL/ind colleagues down the street until they stop at this very tall glass building. I look straight up and can’t even see the top of it.

As I enter the building, I notice a lot of people walking in several directions. The walls are a shiny black, almost marble-looking, and the floor is a dark gray. Now where do I go?

I decide to look at the directory that’s sitting in the middle of the lobby. It’s a flat screen propped up on this modern-artsy looking stand that looks like it should be impossible to support anything on it because it’s just a tall, thin rectangle of marble. I touch the screen and it invites me to “Pick a floor”, “Pick a department”, or “Handicap Assistance”. I don’t really know where I want to go, and considering that there are 88 floors in this building, I need to be more careful about how I go about this. So I tap “Pick a department” and it brings me to another screen listing twenty different departments.

“Administration” is the one I pick. That’s all the way up on the 86th floor.

Well…I can’t really just go up there and ask where the Director is, now can I? I didn’t even bring my sword with me, so I can’t fight her now. I look around and notice less people walking around, and there’s one receptionist at the center desk of the room.

If I stay here too long, she’s going to get suspicious. Because what the hell is a BL/ind employee doing looking at the directory for so long?

But the receptionist…surely she has a lot of information. She’d probably know where the Director is at all times. I just have to be smart about this.

I take in a deep breath, clutch my briefcase and start walking up to the receptionist’s counter. I clear my throat just as I get there.

The brunette receptionist, who is wearing a white blazer over a black blouse and looks like she’s in her late twenties, slowly looks up at me. “May I help you?”

Don’t act natural, but don’t act suspicious either.

“Hi, I was wondering if it might be possible to get a meeting with the Director this week,” I start out in a completely pedantic voice.

The receptionist blinks up at me with her dark eyes.

“I…have a research proposal that I really want to discuss with her.”

The receptionist continues to blink up at me. I see her glance down to the scar on my cheek, and the tattoos on my neck.

“It’s about a plan…for the…environment,” I continue.

The receptionist still just stares at me. Fuck, this plan is blowing up in my face–

“Did you forget to take your meds today or something?” she finally asks in a low, feminine voice.

I blink at her. “…No.”

“Then…why are you asking me something so impossible?”

“What’s impossible?” I ask.

She makes a short laugh. “You’re serious?”

I nod my head.

She sighs. “You know it’s impossible for just anyone to get a meeting with the Director.”

“But I have a good plan! If you just let me speak with her, I think–I think that our future will be brighter, and environmentally healthier.”

The receptionist stares at me before answering, “That’s great. But you’re not getting a meeting.”

I put my head down. “Look, I may be just another BL/ind agent, but isn’t that how all the innovators start? As just regular guys? You gotta give me a chance.”

“I’m sorry,” the receptionist replies. “That’s not up to me.”

“But isn’t it? You’re the one that makes all these appointments, you’re the gatekeeper. You’re the only thing standing between our civilization and a breakthrough that might make the world an even better place.”

“Even if I wanted to set up a meeting between you and the Director, that would be impossible. She’s not here. And she won’t be here for another week. And apart from that, she’s booked solid for the next month on important business.”

“Where is she?” I ask.

“On an important business trip,” the receptionist replies.

Business trip? Where? Out in the Zones? Cause there’s really no other real civilization out there. And just what the hell is the Director doing on this “business trip”?

“So she won’t be here until next week,” I clarify.

“No,” the receptionist stoicly replies.

I think a bit before I respond, “Can you double check and make sure that she is booked solid for the next month?”

The receptionist almost glares at me. Almost, because her face is still completely straight. Her eyes just got a little darker. “That information is private.”

“Except you know all of it,” I repeat.

She huffs out a sigh. “Will you leave me alone if I show you?”

I nod my head.

She purses her lips and turns her computer screen my way. Just what I wanted.

I look at the four rows of a calendar and I can see the different times for meetings that she has, which are marked with acronyms. I see a trend and pick a date. February 17th. She has meetings until 8pm. That’s when I’ll make a move.

The receptionist quickly flips her computer screen back and raises her eyebrows at me. “If I get knocked down for this, you’re coming down with me, too.”

I give her a questioning look. She moves her eyes up toward the ceiling and in several directions. Cameras.

“Well, thank you for your help,” I say as I turn from the desk. I walk to one of the elevators on the side and get in.

  
  


So I had to wait a week. But it’s okay. I’m not rushing this time. After all, if there’s anything I learned from having a broken leg for almost two months, it’s patience.

I decided to play it smart and checked out the 86th floor several times that week, just to get a visual plan of the floor and the rooms. It’s true, the Director wasn’t there, so there was no serious trouble in me going to administration and checking it out.

Apart from visits to the office, I didn’t do much beside practice with Henry’s sword. I tried walking out in the city at night, but it was just weird. 10pm was the curfew, which meant all citizens apart from BL/ind and SCARECROW agents had to stay indoors, or else be charged and possibly arrested. I’m not sure what the curfew thing is all about, but it’s supposed to be like a safety regulation.

Then again, it’s not like going out in Battery City is that much fun. Sure, there’s “bars” and restaurants, but everyone is so drained of life here. And the only music that gets played anywhere is this trumpety, 40’s sounding tune that’s supposed to be Battery City’s anthem on a loop. Sometimes it’s played in different tempos, or with slightly different instruments or in different keys. It drives me fucking crazy.

Oh, and since it’s February, Valentine’s Day is coming up. It’s a holiday about love and romance, but you don’t see chocolates and roses being sold. Instead, there are these pills that you can take with your significant other, to _feel_ in love. Because all the other medication has completely wiped out any real emotion, so you have to take a pill just to feel something for another person for a few hours.

It’s kind of scary how much this society depends on mood enhancers and regulators. First they depend on pills not to feel anything, and then they depend on them to feel something that should be as natural as love for someone they care about. But emotions aren’t something you can just turn on and off. And that’s the scary part about all this. It’s like the people in this city aren’t even human anymore.

Sure, in the past I’ve taken pills to try and prevent myself from feeling pain, guilt, and despair (and for experimental purposes), but a lot of the time it ended up making me feel more fucked up than ever. It’s better to feel things, even if it hurts. Because at least whatever you’re feeling is real. And all you really need to get rid of despair is to find someone who shines so bright that they wash it all away. At least…that’s all _**I**_ really needed. Being in a few bands in which I screamed all my demons out helped, too.

I decided it was better to stay inside, rather than expose myself to this creepy, drugged out madness.

  
  


The Director came back, coincidentally, on Valentine’s Day–not that holidays even matter anymore. It occurred to me that I should probably now go to BL/ind in order to observe her, her patterns, where she went after work, that kind of stuff. Usually people would call that stalking.

So I went to BL/ind headquarters the next day, and periodically went up to the 86th floor. I grabbed an envelope off of the mail cart to make it seem as if I was delivering mail up there. Every time I went up to that floor, I could barely see through the tinted windows of the office. It was only on my third time up there that I caught a glimpse of _her_.

Someone had opened the door, and I peered inside while it stayed open for half a minute. The Director was there, standing in front of a glass rectangle table full of old white men discussing something that seemed to inflate their money-grubbing egos. They were merrily laughing and joking. The Director herself smiled that infuriating smile of hers and I had a flashback to SCARECROW and Mikey on the floor and her stupid face telling him he was gonna become an asset to her.

Before I knew it, the envelope in my hand had started to shake. I snapped out of it and kept on walking. It would be bad to bring attention to myself now. She could recognize me…if she even remembered what I looked like, that is…

I wonder what she was scheming, now that she had us Fabulous Killjoys out of the picture. A business trip was what she was supposed to be doing the whole week. Whatever it was about, I’m sure it wasn’t good.

Well, she’s not leaving this room anytime soon. I’ll have to see where she goes after she gets out of work, so I’ll come back later.

I go back down the elevators to the floor level and just before I’m about to step out, someone yells after me.

“Hey, you!”

I recognized the low, feminine voice behind me and turned around to see who it was. It was the receptionist.

“Come here,” she says, looking from side to side as she gestures to me with her hand.

I slowly walk up to her desk.

She lowers her voice. “I’ve been looking for you all week. I found an opening for you, so you can get your meeting with the Director.”

“What?” I question in surprise.

“I got you a meeting.” She pauses as she puts an index finger up in the air. “On one condition.”

“What?” I ask.

“Go on one date with me,” she tells me with a straight face.

“What?!” I exclaim.

“Is that all you know how to say?” the receptionist asks as she rolls her eyes.

“Look–I appreciate the gesture and everything–” I start.

“No date, no meeting,” she tells me with a fox-like look on her face.

“Hold on,” I start, getting annoyed. “Why would you do something like get me a meeting with the Director?”

The receptionist shifts her eyes. “She has an opening on Monday.”

“Yeah, but…you told me it was impossible to get a meeting with her,” I explain, trying to get to the bottom of this.

“Are you going to take the offer or not?” she stoicly asks me.

“You want to go on a date with me?” I ask as I raise my eyebrows.

“Yeah,” she answers.

“Look, lady… I’m flattered, but I’m married,” I say as I hold up my left hand to show her my ring finger.

“That doesn’t matter,” the receptionist answers with a smile.

I narrow my eyes at her. “Why do you want a date out of all things?”

“You’re interesting. No one in Battery City is ever interesting,” is all she cryptically tells me.

“Okay… but why are you helping me?” I ask. Of course…maybe I should just shut up and take her offer before she changes her mind.

“Like I said, you’re interesting. And if you want to have a chance to speak with the Director about your research proposal, all you have to do is tell me all about it over dinner first.”

I don’t answer right away, and try to think about the pros and cons of this situation. It won’t be a real date. At least, I’ll do everything in my power to make it not a real date. Anyway, this is more like a business transaction. And the most important thing is that this will get me a chance to be alone with the Director.

“Fine,” I finally answer. “Where are we going?”

“Meet me at this restaurant called Hexagon tomorrow night at 8 o'clock sharp.”

“Hexagon. Okay,” I answer before I turn to go.

“Aren’t you going to tell me your name?” the receptionist asks me mid-turn. “So I know whose name to write down for the Director.”

I turn back to her. “It’s…Jim.”

“Just Jim? Well, I’m Rina,” she tells me. “You’re welcome, Jim.”

“I’m not thanking you until I get that meeting,” I say as I promptly turn and leave. I’m not really looking forward to this…

  
  


  
  


Later that night, I stick around to lurk near the parking garage of the building. I’m sure the Director has her own escort, and wouldn’t take public transportation like most of the employees. At around 9 o'clock, a shiny black car with bright lights comes around the bend. The license plate says DIRECTR. Of course. The windows are too darkly tinted, so I can’t see who’s driving or who else is in it. I quickly follow from the corner of the parking garage and see it exit to the right.

If for some reason the receptionist doesn’t go through with her deal, I’ll have to find another way to get the Director alone. I just have to hatch a perfect plan…something I’m pretty bad at. I wish Masaki were here… or Gerard… he always had ingenious plans.

  
  


  
  


Gerard, man… I miss you. But I promise, I’ll get you out of here soon, if it’s that last thing I do on this forsaken planet!

  
  


  
  


The next night, I wear the only suit I own and pack my ray gun inside my jacket, just in case the date with the receptionist is a set-up. Why would she make such a big deal about me asking for a meeting, and then only a week later, practically hand one over to me? And then yesterday was Valentine’s Day. Why wouldn’t she have just asked me on a date yesterday, if she really wanted a date? There’s something more to this situation…

This restaurant Hexagon is not too far from the center of the city. It’s in a brightly lit district, but the streets aren’t that crowded. I show up at 8:05 pm.

For a Saturday night, this place is dead. There’s maybe a dozen people in here altogether, including the staff. Among the rows of small, white square dinner tables, I spot the too-rigid back of a woman with long, dark straight hair. That has to be the receptionist. Rina, I think her name was…?

I approach that table and observe her from the side. Skinny pale face, dark brown eyes, freckled nose, and an outfit that looks like it’s for work: a dark gray blazer over a frilly white blouse and matching dark gray slacks.

“Good evening, Jim,” she tells me as I sit down across from her. “You’re late.”

“Hey…Rina,” I reply. “And I’m only five minutes late.”

Rina doesn’t say anything back. We stare at each other for a few seconds without a word.

She finally starts, “What’s this research plan of yours?”

I had come up with a bullshit plan, in order to somewhat convince her of its relevance. In case she would be dissuaded from getting me that meeting.

“Clean air for the city,” I answer.

“Elaborate,” Rina orders me.

“While Battery City has a healthier atmosphere than that of the Zones, the radiation is still too concentrated, keeping the pollution trapped in this city. It may be harming citizens. As a progressed civilization, we should be finding a way to make the environment more hospitable. A way to block the effects of radiation, or to at least redirect it.”

“What are your exact plans?” Rina asks.

“Well…that’s what the research is for. If we can find a way to filter the air that is coming through the city to become clean air, and mass produce these filters, we’ll be decreasing a lot of the dangers for people who just want to take a walk through their neighborhood.”

Rina is silent for a long time. At least half a minute.

Then she speaks.

“You don’t really know much about electromagnetic radiation, do you?”

What the fuck.

“Uh…” I start.

“Have you ever worked on a project like this? Do you have an estimate of how much these proposed filters would cost to produce and manufacture?”

“Uh…” I feel the blood drain from my face. I wasn’t prepared for this kind of questioning. Even though the way she’s saying it, it all sounds like it should be common sense.

Rina sighs. “Sorry to overwhelm you. Just…if you really want to speak with the Director, she’s going to ask you these questions and more.”

I take a gulp.

Rina smiles at me. “I was a Biomedical Engineering graduate student and research assistant before I worked for BL/ind. This kind of stuff is my cup of tea, so to speak.”

“What the hell are you doing being a receptionist, then?” I ask, flabbergasted at this. She’s a lot more intelligent than I first gave her credit for.

“I agree, it’s not the ideal career, but it places me at the forefront of new developments. I’ve been researching with another colleague, trying to find a way to solve the environmental crisis for years. Just because we survived the fires and the Helium Wars doesn’t mean we’re at a good place. It’s only going to continue to get worse. But the Director seems to only be focused on pharmaceuticals and neurotransmitters. Lately, she’s been doing experiments about the effects of certain neurotransmitters on human memory. I’m not sure what that’s supposed to accomplish, but it’s the drug business that keeps this company thriving, so that’s what she continues to focus on.”

I let my mouth hang open, at a loss for words. If I heard correctly, Rina’s not exactly on board with everything the Director’s doing. This could work to my advantage.

“Anyway,” she continues, “if you have a meeting with her, and bring her attention to the environmental crises and how important it is to solve those first–maybe we can actually start getting somewhere worthwhile with our research. The physics and engineering department is so poorly funded at the research facility, it’s kind of humiliating. But with the Director’s full support and funding, it’ll make our work much easier. We can rescue this world a lot faster.”

I clear my throat. “So…this wasn’t ever really a date then, was it?”

“No, of course not,” she says, a bit too quickly.

I nod my head. “Oh, well, that’s good.”

“So do you have more to your plan or was that just it?” Rina asks.

I shrug. “I don’t know anything about electro…what was that you said earlier?”

“Electromagnetic radiation,” Rina replies.

“Right, that,” I answer. “I just know that the air sucks and that the sky is always gray, and for a place that increased the efficiency of public transportation, there’s still way too much pollution. And…it needs to stop. I need clean air.”

Rina eagerly nods her head. “Good. You’re not entirely clueless then. There are more factors related to the pollution, specifically related to the electromagnetic radiation of this bubble we’re in. It’s getting stronger, and the stronger it gets, the more dangerous it is for us to be exposed, and the more likely it is for people to get cancer from it. We need to find a way to counteract it, but that’s going to take a team of physicists to figure out. And a lot of money.”

I nod in response. I didn’t expect the receptionist out of all people to start spewing lines on how to actually make this world a better place.

“So…that’s why you let me get that meeting,” I figure out. “You’re gonna use me to get your ideas across, so you can get funded.”

Rina looks up at me. “Sorry for not being completely honest with you at first. But this was going to take a while to explain. Anyway, are you up for it?”

“Yeah,” I reply without hesitation.

“You’re sure?” Rina asks. “There’s a good chance you’ll get rejected. No one in the past three years has even asked for a meeting with the Director, let alone proposed a research plan about the environment to her.”

“As long as I have the chance to speak with her alone, I’ll be good,” I reply.

That’s all I need. This environment stuff–yeah, maybe I should actually help out Rina, but Gerard comes first. The second I’ve cornered the Director, I’m making her tell me what she did with him, and no matter what she tells me, I’m going to have to fight her.

Rina smiles at me. It’s weird because she seems almost normal, not like every other zombie in Battery City. “Then you have your meeting. 6pm on Monday. Don’t forget it.”

Rina and I finished up our “date” pretty quickly and went separate ways at around 9 o'clock. Once I got “home” I took out Henry’s katana and started practicing. Less than 48 hours until showtime.

Time to end this once for and all.


	8. Chapter 8

*BING*

The elevator doors open and I step inside the chrome box. No one else is here.

My heart’s starting to beat faster. My neck’s getting hot.

No, I gotta calm down. This is the big moment. I can’t fail.

I have my sword on my back, my pockets loaded with a few weapons, and of course, my ray gun’s tucked inside my jacket. I hope I don’t get searched before I have the meeting, but I highly doubt I will be, since there’s no one really guarding.

The circle with the number 86 on it lights up and the doors chime as they open. I clear my throat and step out. The corridor looks longer and narrower than I previously thought.

Let’s do this.

I square up my shoulders and walk to the Director’s office. I don’t even knock on the door, I just grab the handle and pull it open.

Once I get in, I see her. All alone, as was promised to me by Rina. She has her back facing me, wearing the same outfit I’ve seen her in each time I encountered her. Gray blazer. Gray skirt. Black high heels. She doesn’t even turn around as I get in.

“You’re right on time,” she tells me in a slightly cheery voice.

I don’t answer and wait for her to turn around to face me. Once she does, I see her face immediately focus on mine, and her eyes have this stony stare to them, like she’s trying to figure me out all in one glance.

I guess I should probably say something now…

“Yes, hello Director,” I say.

“I understand that you have a research proposal for me,” she says as she stands in the same spot.

“Yes–”

“But I am afraid that anything you propose will only be met with refusal. We are in the process of conducting very important experiments right now at the research facility. Therefore, all our efforts will be focused on the ongoing experiments and all new proposals such as yours, will unfortunately be met with rejection.”

“You haven’t even heard it yet,” I reply. What a fucking bitch. Even if you take away the fact that she’s responsible for ruining so many lives and causing so many deaths, she’s still a corporate tyrant.

“Whatever the subject of your proposal is, it’s irrelevant. I don’t have time for needless suggestions from an average agent like you. Now, do us both a favor and just walk back out that door so no more time is wasted.” She gives me that infuriating red smile on her lips as she starts to walk toward the door.

I quickly move to get in her path. “How about we talk about something that _is_ relevant, then?”

She narrows her eyes at me. “Sir, if you would please. _Leave.”_

I stand my ground and keep my eyes fixed on hers. “No. I booked a meeting with you here, and I’m not leaving until I get what I want.”

The Director’s glare darkens as she points her chin downward. “Who do you think you are addressing me like this? I’m your superior! I could have you ruined easily for this form of disrespect!”

“Yeah, well, I don’t fucking care!” I answer as I start to walk forward. The Director backs up and for a second, I see apprehension in her eyes.

“Who are you?” she hisses at me.

“That doesn’t matter,” I reply as I hold my ground. “What did you do with the Killjoy Party Poison when he and his friends attempted to overthrow SCARECROW?”

The Director’s eyes widen and her mouth drops open. Then she composes herself, “He’s dead. They’re all dead. They were killed in battle by SCARECROW agents. You should know that.”

“Don’t lie, Director,” I sneer at her. “I know the truth. Now tell me, where did you take Party Poison?”

She glares up at me with her nearly black eyes. “This was never about a research proposal, was it?”

“Where did you take him?!”

She laughs at me. “I don’t know who you are, or what you’re trying to do, but in about five seconds, you’re going to be finished.” She reaches into her blazer pocket, so I instinctively reach for my ray gun.

*PEW*

“Ah!” The Director jerked her right hand into the air. I had grazed her finger tips.

I rush forward and grab her by the collar as I point my gun at her chest. “If you want to live, you’ll tell me where Party Poison is.”

“That gun…” the Director says between gasps of breath as she scrutinizes my bright green ray gun. “You… You’re one of them, aren’t you?!”

“Tell me where Party Poison is!” I holler this time. If she doesn’t fucking talk, I don’t know what I’m going to fucking do.

 "I recognize you now. Nice haircut.“ The Director laughs that annoying laugh of hers again. "Well, well… all this time, and you came back for him? What if I told you that he was dead?”

I shake my head. “Tell me what you did to him. I know he wasn’t killed that night, or else you would have sent him to the furnace with me and Jet. You said he and Kobra were going to become assets to you. What did you mean by that?”

She doesn’t answer my questions and just continues to laugh. So I throw her down to the floor and it satisfies me to see her trip over her heels and skin her knees.

I walk closer to her when she suddenly rushes back up toward me with something sharp in her hand. I leap back, so she only cuts a bit of my jacket.

“I should have killed you myself back then,” the Director sneers at me. “You’re the one who stole Kobra Kid from me. You messed up Korse’s circuits for a few weeks. And you just won’t seem to stay dead no matter how many times my agents shoot you down.”

“Tell me where Party Poison is and then I’ll leave this city for good, then.”

She scoffs. “Oh, you’d love that, wouldn’t you? To ride off into the sunset to your precious Zones. Well, here’s what’s going to happen: I’m not going to tell you a thing. And as soon as I hit that button up on the wall, you’re going to have a minute to live. And then I’m going to have the joy of ending your miserable life right here.”

I smirk. “I thought you’d say something like that. Well then–” I point my ray gun and shoot for her leg, but she moves quicker than I can see and deflects the laser with the sharp thing she had in her hand. Then she throws it at the wall and hits the small red button she spoke about. An odd little wailing siren starts to blare in this room.

The Director crosses her arms. “You have one minute.”

“Then I’ll make this quick,” I answer as I put my ray gun back into its holster. I reach behind my back and pull out the sword from its sheath.

The Director’s eyes widen.

“No mercy. That’s how you roll, isn’t it?” I ask before I lunge toward her.

The Director jumps backward but I pursue. She reaches for her left pocket to pull out some kind of gadget. I throw my sword and it rips through her jacket, causing whatever small thing she had to fall to the ground.

The Director turns to try and pick up the sword. Shit, I didn’t think that move though all the way!

She picks up the sword in her hand and she swipes up at me. “Ha… that was a mistake to leave a sword in my…” She stopped talking once she looked down at the hilt. A look of horror came into her face and she dropped the sword.

I immediately dive to the ground to get the sword and swipe back up at her, leaving the edge of the blade at her throat. I corner her against the wall. “Talk.”

“Kill me first,” she retorts as she tries to kick out at me.

I swipe my blade across her cheek, so a very thin trail of blood starts to travel down her face.

“Tell me where Party Poison is. Then I’ll kill you, you evil hag,” I tell her as I grip her throat.

“Freeze!” The thundering sound of the stomping boots of ten agents filled the room. They all have guns pointed at me.

I look back at the Director and she’s smirking. “You weren’t fast enough,” she tells me with a biting gleam in her dark eyes.

Before I can say anything, she lunges forward and punches me in the face so hard that I lose my balance and only catch myself by stabbing the sword into the carpet as I fall. The agents immediately surround me and the Director crouches in front of me.

“Drop your weapon now or we’ll shoot!” one agent warns.

“You’ve been a thorn in my side long enough, Fun Ghoul. Or should I say, Frank,” the Director tells me with a dark tone.

I feel my heart chill. “How do you know my name?”

The Director giggles as she stands up and kicks the sword out of my hand. “Maybe if you spoke to me with more manners, I’d tell you.”

I glare at her. “Go to hell, bitch.”

“After you,” she replies with a smile. “Well, as much as I’d love to chit chat with you, I have more important things to get back to.”

She starts pacing back and forth in the small space in front of me, and eyes my sword. “Of course…it is curious that you would try and fight me with that sword. Where ever did you get it?”

I keep a steely glare on her and don’t answer.

“Oh, I see how it is,” she tells me with a laugh. “Well, if you’re not going to talk, then I guess I should kill you now.” Her smile fades.

The Director looks up at one of the agents and nods her head. Not even a second later, I feel a boot smack the side of my head.

“Don’t hit him too hard at once. I don’t want him to lose consciousness before I kill him.”

The other agents decide to start using me as a pummeling dummy and periodically kick or punch at my body. I try hard not to make too much noise, so I don’t give anyone the satisfaction.

Fuck. What do I do? I still have my gun–but ow, FUCK!

I try to shield myself with my arms and kick out at the guys hitting me, but I can feel myself getting light-headed. It’s only a matter of time before–

“What are you doing?!”

It was a woman’s voice that had asked that in horror.

“Get out of here!” an agent hollers back after I get hit in my ribs once again.

“Jim!”

Fuck, it’s Rina…I think…?

“Can some of you escort her out of here–wait,” the Director ordered. “Katarina, you stay. You three, make sure she doesn’t get out of here.”

“What–Get your hands off–Director, what’s the meaning of this?!” Rina had been shouting while a few agents forcibly pulled her to the center of the room.

I’m given a brief reprieve to breathe out. I feel blood drip onto my lips as I hazily try to make out the dark haired receptionist. The Director left me to go walk up to her.

“Katarina Dorevsky. My trustworthy receptionist,” the Director remarks.

*SMACK*

It sounded like Rina got slapped.

“Director, all this man wanted was a chance to–”

“Propose a research topic? Don’t presume to think I’m stupid enough to fall for that! You assisted a fugitive Killjoy to come into my headquarters, into my office, to attempt to assassinate me. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Rina has nothing to do with this! She doesn’t know who I am,” I groan out.

“Shut up, you fool!” the Director shouts at me.

“What… I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Rina tells the Director.

“Don’t lie to me. I’ve seen your background files and I oversee everything that gets recorded at the research facility. I knew one day you’d rebel against me to get your own research projects approved for funding, but I never thought you’d team up with this type of scum,” the Director glares at Rina.

“She’s telling the truth!” I yell out. “I didn’t even tell her my real name. She knows nothing. None of this has anything to do with her. So let her go!” Fuck, if anything happens to Rina, it’s all my fault. All she wanted was to get her research proposal approved.

The Director sighs as she starts to pace again. “Well… even so, she knows about you now. And that’s unacceptable. Katarina, your time here is terminated.”

“…What do you mean, Director? Are you firing me?” I heard Rina’s voice waver out of fear.

“Don’t be stupid. I’m not firing you. I’m having you exterminated,” the Director sneers at her.

“Wait–please–” Rina screams as an agent takes her and forces her down on the ground next to me. I look up at her tear stained face.

“Look at the face of the man who got you killed, Rina. Now do you regret helping him?” the Director asks her.

Rina looks down at me with a hard gaze. “Why would you lie to me? Even after you knew how important this was to me?” she asks with a shaking voice.

“I’m sorry,” I croak out. She just looks back at me in anger.

“Well, Frank… It’s been a bit anti-climactic,” the Director tells me. “Of course, now I get to kill you with this fancy sword. It’s a bit too honorable of a way for you to die… but it’ll give me greater pleasure.”

I gotta think, gotta think, I have to get a way out of this–my pockets! But right here are only the smoke bombs–

“Wait!” I protest as the Director starts to approach me.

“What is it now? I told you, I’m not telling you anything about Party Poison, so you should just forget it. Of course, since you’re about to die, I’ll be a bit nice, or cruel, depending on the perspective.” She gets close to me so she’s whispering now. “You know how I know your name, Frank? Because Gerard kept wailing it out as he asked for help. Of course, he screamed for Mikey and Ray, too, but your name was the last thing he said before we put him under.”

I felt everything inside me burn with rage. “What the fuck did you do to him?!”

“That’s a secret,” she replies with a giggle.

That’s it.

I grab my lighter in one pocket and a couple smoke bombs in the other, and then I spit a big lugey in the Director’s face.

“Ughh!” she recoils in disgust, which gives me the time to light the smoke bombs.

“Eat this, bitch!” I yell out as I throw the smoke bombs at her.

They instantly explode and dark smoke clouds fill the room with a rotten egg stench. I get up and snatch the sword from the Director’s hand.

“Rina!” I call out as I reach out to the left, where she was.

“I’m here!” she chokes out as I feel a hand grasp my upper left arm.

“We’re getting out of here,” I say as I storm through the confusion of BL/ind agents towards the door. I perfectly remembered the dimensions of the room and the table, so I didn’t bump into anything on the way out. It was a good thing I came up here so much.

I run with Rina in one hand and Henry’s sword in the other. I don’t know how I’m standing right now after getting beaten so badly. All I know is that the light-headed feeling left me and has been replaced with rage.

I stop and dig in one of my jacket pockets.

“What are you doing?” Rina gasps.

I pull the pin on the grenade I took out, and I throw it toward the administration office.

“Buying us time. Come on!” I reply as I pull Rina along with me to the stairwell that’s next to the elevators.

*BOOM*

“Oh my god! You think…they’re alive?!” Rina exclaims as I start to nudge her down the stairs with me.

“Well, if we’re lucky, they’re not,” I reply.

“Who are you?!” Rina asks with a glare.

“Look, I’ll explain that later!” I snap back. “For now, we have to focus on getting out of here.”

“This is the 86th floor! It’s going to take us forever to get out!” she yells.

“Then I suggest you walk faster!” I call out as I pass her.

She follows me without another word, and soon enough, frenzied BL/ind workers start to rush out of their floors, too.

“Oh no…” Rina moans as the people start to get slower and crowd the stairwell.

“Don’t worry, we’ll just move as fast as we can through the crowd. And then when we get out, we’ll just blend in with the rest of the crowd and get on the metro.”

Rina looks at me with worry in her eyes.

It takes us about twenty minutes to finally get out of the building and we walk through an even bigger crowd outside that’s staring up at the wreckage. BL/ind police and firefighters had arrived on the scene. Helicopters were circling. It was chaos.

“Come on,” I say as I pull Rina with me.

“Where are we going?” she asks.

“The metro’s gonna be full. We’re better off walking.”

“Walking?! And where the hell are we walking to?” she asks.

I turn around quickly. “Can you shut up and just listen to me?”

“Shut up? Listen to you? The reason I’m in this mess is because I listened to you, asshole! Now the Director wants me dead, and now this happened, and now…it’s all your fault!”

“ _ **I know**_ ,” I answer her with a growl. “And that’s why I’m trying to protect you now! So just shut up and do what I say, and I’ll get you somewhere safe!”

Rina glares at me and throws her right hand to slap me across my already-bruised face.

I guess I deserved that.

“We better make it out of this alive,” she tells me with a dark stare.

“We will,” I answer as I continue to pull her along.

I found a sewer opening and led Rina to District 5 through the underground tunnels. We quickly made it back to my apartment, although it was already dark by the time we got back.

“You can stay here for a while. You’ll be safe,” I say as I close the door to my apartment.

“Damn it… I forgot my purse at the desk,” Rina softly exclaims once she sits down in my living room.

“I think you have bigger problems than that,” I wryly tell her as I finally take the sword off my back and feel all the soreness from the beatings I took.

Rina shoots a narrowed glance at me. “Why are we here, Jim? They’re going to find you! And then they’re going to find me and kill me! What did you say to the Director that made her so angry–she said something about an assassination attempt–who are you?!”

I sigh. “Look… I’m sorry I lied to you, but I needed to get the Director alone so I could figure out what she did with my friend. And you can stop calling me Jim. My real name is Frank.”

“Frank…? Just what do you mean, what she did…?” Rina looks at me in confusion.

I look down. “Me and my friends…we’re the Fabulous Killjoys.”

Rina looks at me with a contorted face. “What? That’s impossible. They’re–”

“Dead? Not exactly. Three of us escaped, but for some reason the Director wanted to cover it up and made the newspapers publish those stories. She took Party Poison that night…I just don’t know where. She was planning on using him for something, I just don’t know what. And that’s why I came back here, to find him.”

Rina looks at me with contempt. “You’re being serious, aren’t you?”

I sigh. “I didn’t mean to mix you up in this. All I needed was to corner the Director alone, that’s why I asked for a meeting.”

Rina breathes out a sarcastic laugh. “I can’t believe I helped you…and I was actually worried about you! That’s why I went up to see what was going on when I saw all those agents rushing up to the 86th floor. God, I’m so stupid!”

“Look…you’re not stupid,” I try to comfort her. “You’re actually like one of the smartest people I’ve met.”

Rina looks up and glares at me. “Why can’t you Killjoys just leave things alone? You always have to resort to violence. I’m sure you did something to provoke the Director.”

“Boy, do you have it backwards…” I say as I shake my head. “She’s the one who’s going out trying to exterminate Killjoys. She’s the one who kidnapped a very dear child from us, and then she tried to have all of us killed. Yeah, we resort to violence, but only in the form of retaliation. In case you forgot, they were beating me to a pulp before you stepped into the office!”

Rina stands up quickly. “Where are your pills?”

“What?” I ask in confusion.

“I said where are your fucking pills?! I can’t deal with this right now…” She storms into the bedroom of the apartment.

“Hey!” I call out as I go after her. I catch her going into the bathroom and yank her by the arm to get her out of there.

“Don’t touch me!” she yells as she tries to pull away.

“Calm down! I’m not going to hurt you!” I yell as I keep a firm grip on her arms.

Rina suddenly stops struggling and puts down her head. She starts to sob. “What’s going to happen to me?”

Damn, I feel bad. I loosen my grip on her arms. “Rina… I’m really sorry about everything. And I’m going to do my best to make sure nothing bad happens to you.”

“How? There’s cameras everywhere. And if the Director’s alive, she’ll come after me. There’s no way I can go back to work. What am I supposed to do?”

“First, you’re going to drink a glass of water and sit down,” I tell her as I walk her back to the kitchen. I get her a glass of water, and she immediately starts to drink.

I cross my arms and sigh. “What just happened back there,” I start as I gesture to my bedroom, “Do you need pills to like…function? Are you having withdrawals or anything?”

I nervously glance to the side since she’s not answering.

“Look, I don’t know how these BLI pills work, but if not taking them makes you feel crazy…you’re welcome to take some of mine. Well, they’re not even mine, really.”

Rina puts down her glass of water and looks at me. “I don’t take pills.”

I crease my eyebrows in surprise.

“I have a prescription at home, but I don’t like what they do to people. And I’ve been able to put on a front as long as I’ve worked at BL/ind, so no one’s really been able to tell. It’s just… right now, I’d give anything not to feel the anxiety I’m feeling right now.”

I blink in understanding. “I knew it. There was something different about you. Almost normal.”

“Ha, almost? Well, I suppose I should take that as a compliment,” Rina replies.

I smile at that. “That’s definitely a compliment.”

Rina briefly smiles back. “You should turn on the TV, see if any news shows up.”

I go to the living room and turn on the TV. Sure enough, there’s breaking news on the stuff going on at BL/ind. “Mystery explosion” is the headline on the banner.

_“…fire has been 100% contained, however the amount of damage has yet to be determined, as only three of the floors have been directly affected, but water from the sprinklers has damaged many computers in the building. As such, business at BL/ind is to be suspended until further notice. But fear not, the workers will be able to access various databases online from their homes, so you can be sure that your prescriptions are safe. Oh! Our dear Director has emerged with what appear to be only minor injuries…”_

The Director emerges on a podium in front of BL/ind headquarters with her face bandaged up and her left arm in a sling.

“The bitch won’t die…” I mutter out. Rina gives me an apprehensive look.

_“Dear citizens of Battery City, worry not. I am alright. [the crowd cheers] We are still not sure what caused the explosion, but so far, inspection is leading to faulty wiring within the office as a cause. Accidents happen, even in our perfect city. I just thank my lucky stars that no one got too seriously hurt.”_

Reporters clamor to get her attention with their questions while she continues to wear that fake smile.

“I wonder why she didn’t just tell the truth… That I did it…” I think out loud.

Rina keeps quiet as she she looks at the TV in concentration.

“It would have been easy to blame something like this on me. Or even you,” I continue to muse out loud.

Rina looks over at me. “From what you told me before, it sounds like she doesn’t want the world to know you’re alive. Or that anything is going wrong. It would cause panic, anger…who knows what else?”

“Yeah, but it would be anger against the Killjoys. Isn’t that her goal?”

Rina looks over at me and shakes her head. “I don’t think she wants the whole city to fight Killjoys. That’s what SCARECROW and agents are for. She just wants a perfectly balanced civilization.”

“Whatever the fuck that means,” I mutter.

“Her research has been focused in the psychological department. Perfecting pills with fewer side effects, mood and personality disorder prescriptions that are supposed to have lasting effects. And the memory thing… You’re right. She is up to something… but what?”

Oh my god. It just hit me. Research on human memory, Mikey’s memory loss, and she said “before we put him under” while referring to Gerard…

I think I know where he is.

“Rina, do you remember what kind of experiments were going on in late November, or any time between then and now?”

Rina makes a crease in her forehead. “November… That was around the time she started her experiments in human memory. They weren’t that successful in the beginning, from what I heard. Test subjects usually came out with partial memory removed, others lost motor functions, and some lost the ability to speak correctly…”

“Test subjects–like human test subjects?” I ask.

“Well, yes,” Rina replies. “What are you getting at?”

“I think she might have been using my friend as a test subject,” I tell her.

She blinks at me. “So you think he’s at the research facility?”

“Well, why not? Don’t they do long-term studies on these kinds of experiments?”

“Yes, but… why would she use a Fabulous Killjoy as a test subject for a memory experiment?”

“I don’t know, but… when we fought at SCARECROW, one of my other friends got taken by the agents so he could be repaired–their words, not mine. So I eventually got him out of the hospital, but it turned out he had partial memory loss. He couldn’t remember the last six months of his life up until he woke up in the hospital. And he had a freshly sewn scar on the side of his head. I’m pretty sure the Director and her memory experiments have something to do with it. Especially since she said that she was going to use two of my friends–the missing one and the one with amnesia–and they were going to become assets to her. Do you know anything about that?”

Rina stares in perplexity. “I don’t know about any of that… Yeah, the Director was gone from the office a lot during that time, but…” She looks down. “What the hell is going on?”

“That’s what I’ve been asking myself for three months,” I reply with a twitch of my eyebrow.

“So are you going to try and go to the research facility?” Rina asks me.

“…Yeah. I don’t have any other leads. Unless the Director tells me herself what happened to my friend, but that’s definitely not happening.”

Rina stares at the ground. “We should have figured this out sooner. There wouldn’t have been a need for a meeting, and I would have been able to just show you around the research facility. This all could have been done quietly.”

I laugh. “Come on, there’s no way you would have helped me if I told you what I was looking for. You would have had me arrested right on the spot.”

Rina sighs. “I hate to say it, but you’re right.”

“Hey, don’t feel bad. You would have just been doing what you thought was the right thing.”

“The right thing,” Rina mutters. “What even is the right thing anymore?”

I sigh. “Well, there’s no use moping about it now. We have to take action.”

“What am I supposed to do now, though? The Director’s going to search for me until she finds and kills me. Just for knowing who you are!”

I get up and start pacing. “Rina, you have a few choices of what to do. 1: You can go back home, turn yourself in to the Director and hope you don’t die 2: You can stay here at this apartment and never go out in broad daylight 3: You can get out of Battery City and go into hiding in the desert or 4: You can help me. So what’s it going to be?”

Rina drinks some more water instead of answering.

I sigh as I put my hands on my hips. “Look…I know you’re in a really difficult position, but whatever you decide to do, I’ll try and make sure you’re safe.”

Rina takes in a deep breath as she looks at me. “I’ll help you.”

“Really?!” I ask in pleasant surprise.

“Yeah,” she replies with a nod. “I’m too involved to just walk away from this now. Let’s go to the research facility and look for your friend.”


	9. Chapter 9

I change and clean myself up before Rina and I leave to the research facility. I get rid of the suit and tie and put on my black jeans, my boots, my black and yellow elbow sleeve shirt, and my green vest of course. The Director doesn’t want anyone to know I’m alive? Well, then I’m going to do everything in my power to do the opposite of that. Starting with wearing my regular Killjoy getup.

“That’s quite a colorful outfit,” Rina remarks with a smile as she waits near the door. She’s wearing a black business suit with a white blouse. Perfectly ordinary for her.

“This is the real me,” I reply.

We walk out onto the street, and as usual, not too many people out at night. So we quickly get to the station and get onto the metro and ride it out to the southern edge of the city, where the research facility is supposed to be. I get a lot of stares from people at the station and on the train because of my outfit, but this time I smile at them.

It’s nice to feel like an outsider again.

“You seem pretty calm about all this,” Rina whispers to me as she struggles to keep her eyes forward and to the floor.

“Of course. There’s no way the Director’s going to put my face on any fliers. So as long as we don’t see any agents, there’s nothing to worry about.”

“Easy for you to say. I actually have an identity here,” Rina mutters as she keeps her arms crossed.

“Yeah, but they’re only searching for you because you know who I am. You’re practically safe, too,” I tell her.

Rina inhales and exhales deeply. “I hope you’re right.”

We get off at the final stop of the train, and Rina leads the way as we walk toward the facility. It takes us about five minutes to get there, but the streets are completely empty here. There aren’t even any apartments or businesses around here. It’s just road and sidewalk.

“No one should be guarding the facility right now, but security alarms get activated after the curfew starts. So we better be quick,” Rina tells me as we speedily walk on, her footsteps clacking and echoing in the wind. I wonder if her feet hurt from all the walking she’s done today. She was wearing high heels, after all…

We finally get to the big research building and it’s surrounded by a nice, bright green lawn. I can’t help but laugh at the lit up acronym on the side of it: BLIRF. It sounds like the noise one of my dogs would make when they threw up.

“Over here,” Rina says as she quickly walks along the path to the main glass doors. “Use your card to get in.”

I swipe my card and a robot voice says “ACCESS GRANTED” as a blue light shines.

“Well, that was easy,” I remark.

“Come on.” Rina leads the way and I follow.

The white hallways are empty and our footsteps echo on the linoleum.

“The psych experiments should be on the third floor. If your friend really is a current test subject, he should be up there with the rest,” Rina tells me.

I nod in response and eagerly follow her up two flights of stairs. “Thank you for helping me,” I tell her.

“No problem,” Rina replies as we get out to the main hallway at the end of the landing. She immediately walks up to the 3rd floor directory and studies it.

“Really,” I say as I stop her. “You’re risking a lot for me. Heh, you already _have_ sacrificed a lot for me. And for that… I don’t know how to repay you.”

Rina looks over at me with serious eyes. “Just get me out of here safely, like you promised.”

I fervently nod my head as I look her in the eyes.

“…and maybe go on another date with me.” Rina had winked up at me as she said that last bit.

I was about to protest, but when I really think about it, I owe this lady A LOT.

Rina moves away from the directory and starts to walk again. I follow as she leads and turns into various corridors.

“The long-term test subjects should be in this corridor,” she says without turning to look at me. “There’s no guarantee that your friend is in there, since these longitudinal studies don’t require test subjects to actually be here for the entire duration of the study. But considering it’s a memory experiment, and considering all the experiments that have gone wrong, I wouldn’t be surprised if your friend was still here under observation.”

Right… There’s a possibility that he could be like Mikey. Or worse… Ugh, well–if he’s alive, that’s all that matters.

Rina walks up to a door that has a single window. She pulls on the handle.

“It’s locked.”

“Let me try it,” I say as I go up to the door. Rina moves to the side and watches as I first look into the window of the door. I can see various beds, some with people lying in them and some that are empty. There are also some desks and machines, that look like they must be used for the experiments.

I can’t tell if Gerard is one of those people in there.

“Do you see your friend?” Rina anxiously asks.

“I don’t know… First I gotta get this door open, though.” I turn to face her. “Are you sure that this is the only–”

*FWOOM*

I think someone just opened that door from the inside really fast and hit me in the head. I feel really dizzy and somehow I ended up on my ass on the floor.

“Frank!” Rina screams.

I look up and see the black shadow of someone that looks like an agent. He comes forward and punches me in the face.

Everything fades to black.

  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


  
  


I wake up and hear a soft rumbling before I open my eyes.

I look up and see that it’s dark outside, and that I’m inside a car. I look over to the left to see someone dressed in all black driving. I can’t see their face because they have some weird helmet mask thing on.

“Who…who are you?” I croak out.

The driver doesn’t respond and only tilts their head slightly in my direction for a second before turning back to the road.

I try to adjust myself and discover that my hands and feet are bound in silicon cuffs. I grunt as I try to sit up.

“Hey,” I say, feeling less foggy. “What the hell happened? Who are you? What happened to Rina?”

“I suggest you stop worrying about all that. None of it will matter where you’re going.” The voice is deep and muffled by the helmet. But for some reason, it sounds a bit familiar.

“What happened to Rina?!” I yell out this time. The last thing I remember is getting into the psychological experiment department and then getting hit in the face. Someone hit me. And Rina screamed.

“Shut up,” the driver tells me.

“You’re the asshole who hit me, aren’t you?” I sneer. “Where the fuck are you taking me? And what happened to Rina?”

“I said shut up!” The driver reaches over and sticks something into my neck.

“Grr!” It felt like a needle was stabbing halfway through my neck. It burned, but then my whole body started to feel cold. “What are you…”

Everything goes black again.

  
  


This time when I wake up, it’s because I feel my side hit something hard, like asphalt or rock.

“Ugh,” I moan out as I feel myself get turned over onto my back. I try to open my eyes and see the man in black uncuff my links. It looks like we’re on a road, and the sky looks purple.

As soon as he undoes the links on my hands and then my feet, I clumsily lunge at him. But he sends me back down with a solid kick to my chest.

“Guh!” I groan out as my head hits the floor. “Why didn’t you kill me?”

“I don’t like killing people who are unconscious or otherwise unable to fight back,” the masked man says as he walks back to the black car that’s only a few feet to my left.

“What? Wait…where am I?” I ask. I look around and there’s nothing but dirt and cement buildings.

The driver ignores me and gets into the car.

“Hey!” I yell out as I struggle to stand up, still feeling drowsy.

“You’ll need these,” the driver says as he drops what appear to be my ray gun and sword out of his window.

“Wait!” I yell out as I run after the car. But it’s too late. The driver speeds off down a dusty road, and in less than a minute, the car is gone from my vision.

I walk over to pick up my sword and my gun.

“Fuck…” I exhale as I look around me. The sun is barely coming up, and I’m in what looks like a scene from the Terminator–not the present, the future after Skynet took over–and these concrete buildings surround me. They all look like they’re crumbled and the road is all cracked and dusty. This is what a real post-apocalyptic city is supposed to look like.

  
  


What the hell am I doing here? Why did that guy take me here? And why would he give me my sword and gun–was this some kind of exile? And more importantly… what happened to Rina?

  
  


After resting a bit, I try to find a way back to Battery City. But it’s not going too good, considering I have no idea where the hell I am in relation to the rest of the world.

I try to follow the road I came from, but that only leads me to a dead end of broken buildings. I’m not even sure how much farther I have to walk until I reach Battery City.

Fuck.

I can’t believe I let everyone down. Gerard, Masaki, Rina… I made promises to them. Promises I couldn’t even keep. Not to mention Ray, Mikey, Dr. D, Grace, and the others I let down. I even lied to Leya. I told her she’d see me again.

Masaki was right… I shouldn’t make promises I can’t keep…

Before I can really get deep down into my depression, I’m interrupted by a weird rattling sound.

I stand up and try to look for the source. If something or someone else is here… that could be good. Or it could be bad.

It’s silent for a few minutes. Maybe it was just wind that moved some rubble or something…

And then I hear it again, so I edge closer to this shady looking bit of a building. Something bright darts out toward me.

I drop to the ground to dodge it. I look up and see someone dressed in all black. The uniform is almost like what a S.W.A.T. police member would wear: slightly baggy pants, belts with various things strapped onto their legs and arms, only their wrists partially exposed, shoulder and chest plates, and a shiny black helmet on.

I take out my ray gun and shoot at the (I presume) agent, getting them in the stomach. He shoots at me while he’s down, and tries to get up. I run and shoot as he continues to shoot at me. He’s not going to go down so easy… I lift the sword off my back with my left hand and then throw it at the agent.

“Ahh!” the agent shouts as it sticks into one of his arms.

It’s my chance to get close and I finally take the shooter out with a laser to the head.

I gasp out in exhaustion. I’m still sore from getting beaten by the agents yesterday. This whole running around thing isn’t exactly what I need right now.

But before I’m able to even take a five minute breather, three more of those same black-clad agents show up.

“Fucking hell…” I mutter.

I spend another five minutes taking those guys out, but luckily they had packs on them. With food and shit. I’ll live to see another day.

But…

If I don’t get out of here, am I going to have to be fighting these goons this frequently? They’re not even your average agent. These guys actually know how to put up a good fight.

Another hour passes before two more of those agents show up. I take them out. They’re the last for today.

  
  


  
  


  
  


The days pass on and on like this for the next several… I don’t even know how long it’s been now. I’ve been walking and walking, trying to find my way back to Battery City, but each way has only been met with ruined buildings or dirt. I still don’t know where the fuck I am.

I’ve been taking refuge in one building that isn’t that shoddy, but I’m barely functioning. I’ve been starving, thirsty, and tired. All I do is occasionally kill agents who try to kill me. And I’m getting fucking exhausted of it.

I was able to keep track of the days, as long as I only smoked one cigarette a day. But that only lasted for seven days. And now I don’t have anymore cigarettes, so I’ve been getting these stupid headaches. And it’s been at least a week since the last time I smoked one.

  
  


Today is surprising. It’s overcast. It’s hot out here, but at least the sun had let up a little.

I like when it’s overcast. I see less hallucinations.

Yeah, I’ve been hallucinating.

Whoever the hell I’m talking to.

I’ve seen Jamia like twenty times. Gerard like ten times. Everyone else a few times. It’s been really fucking annoying to find that they’re all illusions. It’s seriously been fucking with my sanity, and sometimes I kind of just want to off myself to make it all stop.

But I don’t.

Because I still have promises I need to keep.

And you’d think that sleeping would be better, but it’s not. Because I can’t even sleep. Because I just see all my failures in my dreams.

  
  


  
  


I started walking in a new direction today. Away from the tall ruined buildings, or as I like to call it, the skyscraper graveyard. I must have walked all day, because before I knew it, the sky had gone really dark.

But even though it’s dark, I can sort of make out my surroundings. I’m still walking along a broken road, but there haven’t been any agents all day. It’s been nice, not having to fight someone for one day. That only happens every, like, three days around here.

I find a small, cozy building. On the inside it looks like it used to be some kind of pizza parlor or something. I’m only guessing because of all the cracked poster frames on the wall with maps of Italy, various sports banners, tv screens, pool tables and arcades, red pleather booths, and old black-and-white photos of fat Italian grandmas. I take a seat in one of the booths and rest my sword on the table.

A few days ago, I pocketed a small radio transmitter off of one agent. But it was damaged in our battle, so it hasn’t seemed to work that well. It’s got a button crashed in, but I can still hear things sometimes. It’s all a matter of luck if I can get something sent across. I don’t even know who would hear it, or respond. But it’s my only link to civilization, and if that’s gone…

I take out the radio transmitter from my vest and turn it on. It has a light up screen on it that tells you the frequency and time span of your recordings. I’ve only been able to make one recording so far, because the record button gets jammed and everything sounds crackly when I play it back again.

But maybe I’ll try again tonight.

I press the record button and I hear a bunch of crackly static.

“I think I finally got a handle on this thing,” I say with a laugh. God, who am I even talking to? Ugh, just keep talking…

“Now that it’s nighttime, things are a bit safer. I’ve noticed that none of those agents in black ever attacks me at night. I guess they have curfew or something.”

I look around me and notice the emptiness of the place. The big glass windows are all broken, so I don’t even feel separated from the outside.

“It’s quiet,” I speak into the transmitter again. “That’s nice.”

At that moment, the transmitter starts to blink off again.

“Ugh, Goddammit! Work, you stupid thing!” I growl out.

Ugh, I guess I better make this count while the thing still seems to work.

“So it seems like no one got my last transmission or…or maybe no one was able to get here.” I laugh at myself. Like anyone would even come to get me…like anyone would even know where I was.

“It’s okay,” I continue. “Even if I’m just talking to dead static, I’m still alive. If you can call it that…”

I pause because I hear something funny outside, but so familiar. Kind of nostalgic. It’s not really wind, but–

“Hey! You know, I can hear the ocean right now. And I don’t think it’s me being crazy for once, heh.”

Even though I feel crazy all the time.

“Although going this long without a cigarette makes me want to pull my fuckin’ hair out 23 hours out of the day… Hey, wait. The ocean. That means there’s water nearby. Which means I can still live for another seven days, or whatever fucking time limit you have to live on water!”

I look around me, noticing the quiet. Noticing how ridiculous I sound. How lonely I am.

No one knows I’m here. Absolutely no one, except that weird agent in black who dropped me off here.

Who the fuck knows what happened to Rina… Masaki probably thinks I’m dead. Ray and Mikey… Surely, D must have let them know that something had happened to me. I’ve been gone for so long. Not to mention, the rest of the world still thinks I’m dead. I might as well be.

Well. This isn’t how I pictured things to end. By being stranded in the middle of nowhere and starving to death.

I look down and notice the transmitter is still on, so I speak into it again.

“I’m starting to think… I’m starting to think that maybe this was a mistake. I should have just let things go. I should have just stayed with the people who were there for me. Because now I’ve lost everyone and I’m going to die alone.”

I sigh as I feel a tear fall down on the side of my nose. I turn off the transmitter.

I guess sometimes, even when you try your hardest, even when you make promises and mean to keep them no matter what, things just don’t work out. I’ve let everyone down, because I didn’t want to listen to reason. I just wanted to listen to my own heart. Except my heart was wrong. ‘Cause all I’ve done is bring trouble to myself and to the poor souls who were kind enough to give a damn about me.

Maybe I do deserve to go out like this…

**Author's Note:**

> I know this story kind of leaves off on a bleak cliffhanger, although the story continues in When All The Lights Go Out, and then The Last of All The Rides We Take
> 
> I highly encourage that you read those fics, especially When All The Lights Go Out, to understand the conclusion of this story. And I would recommend you read even the first installment of this series, A Dream Where the Fallout Lies--because without reading those titles, a lot of things won't make sense and they are all connected--and they're all mostly from the perspective of the OC protagonist, Leya.
> 
> Sorry for anyone who just decided to read this fic as a standalone... this fic came out as a side-story/prequel to When All The Lights Go Out, when I'd already written half When All The Lights Go Out. That's why you need to read that story before you read the concluding chapter of this series.
> 
> Anyway I hope you enjoyed this story! Let me know if you have any questions :)


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